At laaaaaaaast, our bloooog has come aloooong

So we're out here! It's great. Let me get you caught up.

After a couple years of deciding what the Next Big Thing would be, our mutual wanderlust (and the sense that we're not getting any younger, and *might* be getting older) was tugging us toward a more mobile life. We're in a great situation--Bryan can work from anywhere there's internet access, and being an RN means that there are jobs all over the place! Temporary ones! I didn't even have to commit for long! Knowing we wanted to be somewhere totally different, B loving the southwest as he does, and me unleashing my pioneer spirit, we set our sights on the four corners area and narrowed our search to Arizona.

So on March 9, we stuffed the truck with guitars and sleeping bags, a few books, and a dizzying array of electronics, and pulled the Wildwood away from our cozy home in Asheville. We were Flagstaff bound! A whirlwind drive later, with a long pit stop for some much-needed RV maintenance in Knoxville, we were 1,700 miles from home, and I was flipping out over every new bird, tree, and sunset view. On the way through Oklahoma, I saw great-tailed grackles (which sound as much like birds of the apocalypse as anything could--their calls are electronic, digital, like someone took a robot's inner workings and stuffed them into a sleek, iridescent-black bird.) We drove through vast fields of wind turbines in the plains of Texas, where I also saw my first greater roadrunners. At our KOA stop in Holbrook, AZ, the calls of white-winged doves woke us up in the morning, and the last thrilling streaks of western sunsets put us to bed at night. We became exposed to traditions of the southwest--including Navajo tacos and blue corn enchiladas at the kachina-muraled roadside Kiva Cafe in Milan, NM (with red or green chile? The question of the century out here.) An exhilarating, suddenly-cold thunderstorm in the Petrified Forest's blue mesa badlands gave me the first notion of how drastically the weather changes out here. I would need to change my expectations after the soft green Smokies and WNC's temperate and forgiving climate.

At the end of our journey, we landed in a new nest--a sweet little 400-square-foot garage apartment in Flagstaff, smack dab in the middle of a REAL LIVE PRAIRIE DOG TOWN. Legit. 

Hey look, a Gunnison's prairie dog!