The third week – from North Bend to Santa Cruz
Oh boy, time is going fast! And then again it’s not. We see so many things and meet so many people that is seems like we’ve been away for ages, and then again it doesn’t feel this way 🙂
In this blog another photo collection of our third week, where we left North bend to drive to Santa Cruz. Below this blog you’ll find the video of our third week. If you don’t want to miss any videos you can subscribe to our YouTube channel and if you would like to follow us daily then this is possible through Instagram.
Because the photos and the video give a perfect summary of our week, I wanted to use this blog to answer some questions we got.
How is Liv doing?
We’ve been saying it before, but Liv is a born traveller. I think it’s in her blood. She isn’t impressed quickly and she acts like it is completely normal to sleep in a different house every 1, 2 or 3 nights. She asks us now dailey where we are going, if there are toys and if there are friends to play with haha. As bonus she has slept almost through every night since we’ve been here (and she hardly did this at home), so if this continues we will be so well rested by the time we go home. Yay!
Can Liv speak English?
When Liv started watching television we only offered her English speaking cartoons, hoping she would pick up something. And she did! It seems like she can understand most of the English, but she doesn’t answer in English yet.
Can you keep up with the speed of your travels?
Yes and no. Normally we are travellers that don’t do to many long distance days. We rather explore one area thoroughly, before going to the next area. Meaning we could easily spend 90 days just on the West coast of the U.S. The thing was that I really wanted to go back to West-Virginia where I did a year of high school in 1996 and because we weren’t allowed to buy a car in the U.S. we also had the drive the Vancouver-San Francisco part.
Our original plan was to stay in the U.S. for half a year, but that wasn’t possible with our visa, so to make a long story short: 90 days isn’t much to cross America, but it’s a well thought decision we made so we are not complaining about the speed. Meanwhile we are getting really good in staying somewhere for a maximum of 3 nights and then move on. When we enter Canada we will have more time to just relax en do nothing for a day and the same counts for New Zealand. (But that’s still farrrr away. First we are enjoying our time here.
How do you like staying with other people?
A lot better as expected. To be honest: we love it! We also see that Liv is enjoying it so much and you know the rule: if you child is happy, you are happy. That’s one of the reasons why we made another video looking for places to stay. We want more 🙂
Are you coping financial?
That is a really good question. We know one thing for sure: we were very optimistic when writing: “How to pay a world trip”. We just really wanted to go. We did get a few comments from people saying that we wouldn’t make it with this budget and we have to admit that they might be right. Although we are not going out for diner (or lunch) and we are not doing anything crazy expensive, life is just expensive here!
This week I went for groceries for diner for 4 persons (a dish with salmon), some fruit, bread and muesli. I took my bank card and just in case $100 in cash. At the cash register the total is $100,85 (!). So I take my card and it doesn’t work! So I couldn’t pay for the groceries… I’m debating what I should leave behind and the the lady behind me says: “I have a dollar for you”. My hero!! This way I could take everything I wanted 🙂
But like I said, life is expensive here. Especially if you want to eat healthy. We haven’t made a new calculation. We first want to visit a few national parks (which are also expensive) and then take a look at the damage 😉 (If you are wondering now what we will do if we haven’t got enough money then the answer is that we will go back before the year is over. Of course this is not what we want and not ideal, since we rented out our home).
Do you have a question that we haven’t answered yet. Let us know and I will answer it in the next blog 🙂
Marry
