Let’s go get you fingerprinted. Background checks are commonplace for most employers.  However, I have never before experienced such an in-depth process for being selected for a position, let alone a volunteer position.  I appreciate the steps towards public safety that are taken to get a county job but it was a totally new and…

A father wearing a cowboy hat, swinging his daughter around on the playground.  An elderly man wearing a Hawaiian shirt.  A young family with a baby living in pop-up campers.  A man selling Native American jewelry at a roadside rest area.  We’ve met all sorts of interesting people on our journey so far and I…

When we started on this adventure, we had a very loose idea of where we were going.  We knew that we wanted to be in Colorado for Thanksgiving and California for New Years but everywhere in between was up for discussion.  After New Years, we really had no idea what to expect.  It was terrifying…

The Wandering Dolphin finds itself temporarily resting in Southern California.  And what a place to rest!  Each day we enjoy sun and a temperature holding steadily in the 60s.  We are near the ocean, my favorite place to be.  And we are experiencing new things each day! Our lives feel more fulfilling than ever before…

A quick update on our furnace situation: Several weeks ago, I briefly mentioned that our furnace was starting to squeal quite loudly.  A sound like the combination of a knife being run over a chalkboard and someone torturing a squirrel.  We figured out that it was our blower motor beginning to go out so we…

The rest of our week’s visit with our friends Ali and Jared brought on much better weather.  After surviving our tornado, we actually got to enjoy some sun! On Thursday, Day Four of our visit: We took Ali and Jared to Oceanside, the city where Andy’s grandpa and aunt live.  We are really fond of…

“Fire extinguisher!”  These are words I hoped to never hear from my husband. This post is a little delayed since I had poor service at our last campsite.  We have been in coastal Southern California for over a week now.  Our friends Ali and Jared flew into town to visit us and see SoCal so…

Nothing says “an adventure is about to begin” like your propane detector going off.  We were packed and ready to leave Prescott, pulling out of the driveway, when our ears were accosted by an obnoxious noise.  Luckily, we were already planning to stop by a local RV dealership to dump our tanks (a service that…

2015 was pretty eventful for us.  We painstakingly killed the honey-do list on our house in St. Paul, staged it for sale, and sold our house in a matter of months.  Then we moved into our RV full-time, saved up some money over the summer, quit our jobs (of 9 and 12 years, respectively), and…