February 28, 2023
We have certainly been less on top of it this time around when it comes to planning our next travel nursing road trip. Dan has been working a contract in Phoenix, Arizona since the beginning of December, and we’re actually still not sure where we’re going next. Typically, between contracts we like to return to New Hampshire (where we’re from and where our family is), and that’s the plan this time too. We’ll be leaving in just about a week making our way back east.
We’ve loved our time in Arizona and will definitely miss it (though I’m sure we’ll be back to visit), but are excited for whatever comes next. I, for one, have come to realize that I would much rather the oppressive humidity of the south than the extreme dryness of the desert. It’s beautiful out here, our trip to Tucson really helped us to appreciate the desert more, but man I hate how dry it is. The last time we were in Arizona was only for a few days on our grand Road Trip of 2016, so maybe it just wasn’t enough time for me to fully notice it. That said, there are so many other aspects of Arizona that we’ve loved. We’re leaving with the sense that we’d love to come back to visit, but that it isn’t a place we’d hope to settle in.
Part of our delay in planning this next road trip (we started less than a week ago), was that Dan had been offered a contract in New Orleans that would start March 15th. This would have changed our plans of going back to New Hampshire; we would have had to drive straight there. It was an ideal contract on almost all fronts, the start date was the only negative, so we were planning to accept it and were actually in the process of signing the contract when we received word that there was a miscommunication. Apparently the hospital had or had meant to alert Dan’s travel nurse agency that they needed night nurses instead of day nurses now. The agency and hospital went back and forth for a few days, but ultimately they pulled the offer.
At this point, we’ve decided to only accept another days contract and are hoping to stick to that. It was disappointing and a bit chaotic to lose the New Orleans contract, but we’re hopeful another great one will come soon. In the meantime, that means we can keep our original plans to visit family in New Hampshire before we head to Dan’s next contract, wherever that may be. It’s nice to have a little bit of a break in between contracts, especially after facing such a long road trip!
Our first stop will be Santa Fe, New Mexico. We’ll be taking a more northern route this time around, you can compare it to the southern route we took last time in my post about our 2022 Road Trip from New Hampshire to Arizona. That said, Santa Fe is a bit further from Phoenix than Albuquerque is, which is good as we try to average around eight or nine hours of driving a day not factoring in stops. We also haven’t loved staying in Albuquerque the couple of other times we’ve driven out west. I don’t know if it’s just us booking places in the wrong areas, but we’ve never felt super safe where we’ve ended up staying.
After Santa Fe, we’ll be making a stop in Dodge City, Kansas. I don’t know anything about Dodge City, but it was most on the way and relatively in the middle between Santa Fe and our next stop: Fairfield, Iowa. One of my best friends lives in Fairfield and has since we both started university, but somehow we’ve gone all this time without me making it out to visit her! Honestly, the main reason we chose the northern route was so we could visit, especially once we realized it’s practically right on the way of the fastest route back east.
We’re a bit nervous about driving further north while it’s still wintertime, but we’re planning to dip back down further south a bit to try to avoid some of the snow. We don’t have snow tires on the car (you really don’t ever need them in Phoenix) so we’ll be planning to take it slow and hopefully avoid much bad weather. We’ll stay a couple of days in Fairfield which will be so much fun and a great break right in the middle of our long drive.
After Fairfield we’ll head to Columbus, Ohio and then on to Scranton, Pennsylvania. Finally, after just about a week of travel, we’ll be back in New Hampshire! We should make it just in time to celebrate my sister’s ninth birthday with family. Depending where we’re going for Dan’s next contract, we may need to go through our clothes and bring some different warmer weather options (that’s my hope at least!). Other than that and a few doctor’s appointments, we’re hoping we’ll have just about a week or so to rest and enjoy seeing family. After that we’ll head back on the road for Dan’s next contract!
It’s looking like most of our stops we’ll be staying at Airbnbs, similar to last time. I wrote a post comparing Airbnbs vs Hotels if you’d like to check it out! In general, we’ve been leaning towards staying in hotels as the prices of Airbnbs continually rise, but when we’re travelling with our cats Airbnbs come out as cheaper 90% of the time. Check out that post along with our other road trip themed posts for some of our tips on surviving (and enjoying!) long road trips:
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