Wandering & Waiting

I've been hanging around Page, AZ - Lake Powell for a few days waiting to go up to Kanab to start working. My camera has been a bit underused so today I finally got to give it a workout.

I've been wanting to go to Horseshoe Bend and take photos ever since I found out the place existed. Today ended up being perfect for it - great weather, a little cloud cover, only a few people there. Awesome.

I took this one on the way to Page, somewhere in Arizona...

My $500 Home

Finally found a trailer to live in... its a fixer upper.

Lucky for me, I have a handy friend that's helped me out with a few repairs.
I was scanning Craigslist for weeks. Not just the local Craigslist, but several in other states. Turns out the trailer I ended up forking over $500 for was a block away from where I've been hanging out the past couple weeks.

So, the before:

BEFORE

Anyone who knows me, knows camo is so not my thing. It had to go. Fast. Time to make like Tom Sawyer and do a white wash.

Before the paint, we popped it open and patched up a few small holes in the canvas. The canvas needs to be replaced, but that might come later, depending how long I keep this thing.

AFTER

Much better. Now we can move on to the more important bit - a functional door.

FIXING THE DOOR

The doorway is warped, so we cut some wood into a wedge to fit and make the door meet the side of the trailer, then added some small pieces of wood to make it latch and stay shut. Came out awesome.

I forgot to get a shot of the table up, but this is the table seating area - the door is lying on top.

Stove, pump sink, double sized bed... going to re-cover the cushions - once I find some fabric and beg my SIL to sew them for me :)


Its not exactly beautiful, but I'm hoping it will work. I move on to Utah as soon as we can get the tail lights functioning properly again - the wires got jostled when my friend took them off as we painted, otherwise I'd be on the road right now!

Set for the year

So I belong to this website for workampers.

I pay for a yearly subscription, get to post my resume, check out employment listings, and all sorts of other stuff I don't really pay much attention to, but should.

Well the other day this membership paid off. I was contacted first by Amazon. Amazon hires workampers for the Christmas season madness - processing orders, pulling, packing, shipping... bet you thought it was trolls, elves or oompa loompas, but nope - its workampers.

(BTW, if you use the Amazon links on this my blog to buy stuff, I get a few pennies... help me out consumers!)

So I'm set to work for them at their Kansas warehouse. I told the guy I could work the whole season from October to Christmas. But then...

Contact #2 came along. A guy who runs a tourist place in Utah that shall be named later found my resume on the website. He's looking for a photographer/retail person. Emailed me,  I sent some answers to questions and a couple references, a very short interview and boom: he hires me about 5 minutes into the interview.

I didn't think I'd be starting a job until late April, but lucky me, I get to start March 1st, and go til Oct 31st. Overlapping Amazon... hopefully they are cool with that, or I leave Utah early because the money at Amazon is much better plus I get a bonus if I stay the whole season. I need to make that happen.

WANT

CAN AFFORD

Dilemma: I need a trailer to live in so I don't have to stay in my car/tent the whole year. Frantically trying to find a popup tent trailer on the cheap, but not needing repairs cheap.

Stop #1

The Rockies... from I-70 heading towards Denver

I'll probably definitely be adding a lot of photos to this blog... cause, well that's kinda what I do. All of them are for sale of course! And by purchasing you get some great wall art, and I get a few gallons of gas so I can take more photos... win win!

Living in my SUV

I finally got the SUV bought from my neighbor and I'm off. I've slept in the car 5-6 nights now, and its been very cozy. I still need to re-organize and send some stuff off to Goodwill, but I'm happy with the result so far.

I have a 2000 Ford Expedition - its a beast of a vehicle, with plenty of room to make a living space. The first thing I did was take out the 3rd row seat and hand it back to my neighbor to sell himself. Next, I folded the 2nd row seats down - they fold flat - making the entire back of the car completely level - YAY!

I used the folded down seats at the base for my bed. I'm short - 5'2", so I fit lengthwise the width of the car. Unlike most people I don't have to sleep the length of the car. I'm a born space saver! I went and bought a full size 4" memory foam mattress topper - best $110 ever spent. I cut it in half, since the length of a full mattress is double my height just about. So, cut it in half and doubled it up, now I have an 8" comfy mattress. Its so full of awesome. I have 4 blankets - I sleep on top of 2, and have 2 to cover me - so far this has been warm enough for me and it got into the teens last night. We also got over a foot of snow the other night and I was fine.

I bought a 4' narrow folding table and put that over a couple tubs of stuff (mostly books). The table serves a triple purpose - an extra surface to stack things on, a table for when I get to a campsite, and a table for when I do art fairs. Multi-purpose = space economy.

I got 2 sets of plastic drawers - one is for kitchen stuff & food, the other for clothes - although it is mostly holding my home brewed beer til the Superbowl party I'm going to tomorrow.

I invested in a portable powerpack 600 made by Duracell. You can get it on Amazon the cheapest. So far its been AWESOME. I have AC power in my car now. I keep it charging when I'm driving, or plug it in at a friend's place. I used it for the first time today to power up my rice cooker and make some noodles. I have about 480w continuous power - which is enough for a rice cooker, blender, my laptop, phone, ipod... and it has jumper cables so I don't need someone else around should by battery go dead. Massive bonus.

So I'm staying in Denver til the end of March to find some work, then off on the next adventure. Trying to find my April-October season position somewhere, but I just got a job at Amazon for the Christmas season, so at least I've got that set!