Whale Tales

Here's a few whale pictures. Again, you can see this in person if you come visit!

Hearst Castle Pictures

These are just a few pictures from Hearst Castle built by William Randolph Hearst, newspaper magnate. He had so much money, he didn't know what to do with it. The funny thing is, he was unable to finish it. He kept adding and adding things. Toward the end, he was $120 million in debt! This was toward the end of the Depression. If you want to see this in person, all you have to do is COME VISIT US!!!

New Breaker/Whales

The RV park owners changed the main breaker on our pole on Monday. Since then we've been able to keep it cool inside the RV. We hope that trend continues. I'm in a lot better mood when I don't get sweaty when I'm doing nothing. My whale watching pictures turned out pretty good. We have been whale watching in Maine, Washington and Alaska. One thing that I've never seen is a lot of seals in the water. The seals went wherever the whales were feeding. The seals ate and played while the whales ate. There were 500 to 1000 seals playing and swimming around these massive whales. They were so fun to watch. We saw quite a few whales (humpbacks). Our boat was a 20 foot pontoon boat with two outboard motors attached to it. It was pretty wavy and a couple of people got sick. It had room for 24 people including the captain and the first mate. We weren't very far from the shore (maybe 3 miles) to see the whales. These whales are 40 - 50 feet long. One whale liked the boat and kept sitting right underneath us. He put on quite a show. One time he even stuck his head out of the water to get a better look at us. The first mate was crying because she was so excited. She said that she's been doing this for a year and has never seen anything like this. She said that if a whale breaches (jumps out of the water), she'll jump into the water. We were hoping even more that a whale would breach so that we could see her jump in the water. I'll try to post some pictures of whales and also of Hearst Castle tonight.

The Doctor said . . .

One of the first days that we worked, I was sitting in the nurses' station reading my California travel book. A doctor said, "Where are you from?" I told him Florida. He said, "Isn't Florida supposed to be flooded soon due to global warming?" I replied, "Before I came out here, everyone warned me that California is due to drop off of the edge of the continent." He told me that I'm not allowed to talk to him again. He had questions about one of my patients and he pretended that I wasn't even talking to him.

The Job

Oh, yeah . . . The Job. The reason we're here. Like I said before, it's a very small hospital. CA has very strict laws about how many patients a nurse can have. For step-down units, nurses are only allowed to have 4 patients. The first week that we were here, we had only 3 patients each. They have to staff it that way in case they get a lot of patients coming into the ER. A lot of hospitals that we work for will send people home the instant that a unit's census drops. If they get a lot of admissions, the nurses on duty just have to take more patients until the next shift. Last fall, to cut costs, this floor got rid of all of its techs/nursing assistants. Most of the nurses on the unit either left, went to other floors, or went into the float pool (float between the units of the hospital). That means that most nights that we work, it's all travelers or float staff. I like working with no techs. Some places that we work the techs are great and really help out. A lot of times, though, it's hard to get them to do things so we end up doing our job and theirs, too, rather than argue. They had two charge nurses that were staff. One of them just lost her dad to a heart attack. Her family is wealthy and owns a ranch which she needs to help run. That means that she's off indefinitely. We work with a traveler whose husband is also a nurse and works in the ICU. They usually live in a RV but decided to take an apartment this time. They didn't want to drive the RV all the way from Florida. Another traveler's husband is an LPN that works in a local nursing home while they're here. They also live in an RV. Two female travelers travel together and two male travelers also travel together. The guys make sure that everyone knows immediately that they are just friends. Their contract is almost over and they're heading for Orlando. It's a fun group and they want to do some things together if we all have off at the same time. The job seems to be going fairly well. We'll probably ask to stay until Dec. 2nd. We've got a lot of things to see!!

The Weather/The RV Park

The weather here is so strange. We live about 30 miles north of San Luis Obispo (SLO) where we work. To get to work we go down a long 7% grade. At the top of "the grade" it can be 100 degrees. It's been 100 degrees every day where we live. As soon as we drive down the grade (that's what the locals call it), the temperature drops to mid-70's. When you drive 10 miles further west to the beach, it's mid-60's. This is all in the middle of the day. In Paso Robles, where we live, about an hour-and-a-half before sunset, the temperature drops dramatically. Most nights that we have off we open the windows because the temperature at night is mid-50's. I love the evenings here. There aren't a lot of bugs. I like to sit outside and watch the sun set over the next hill. It doesn't rain between April and December, so you never have to worry about getting rained out of something. Unfortunately, there aren't any RV parks in SLO. The weather there is perfect. Our main breaker has flipped several times. On Saturday, we went whale watching and to the coast. When we got back, the breaker had flipped and it felt hotter inside than out (it was 106 outside). It took Harley 4 hours to stop panting. The owners of the RV park don't work on weekends. They're supposed to change the breaker today. We're looking into RV parks in the beach areas, but so far they're all booked until mid September. The RV park is really, really nice. It does have a pool that we can cool off in and a hot tub for those cool evenings. On July 4th, they gave us a nice dinner and we watched the town fireworks from the clubhouse. The fireworks went off right across the street. The RV park is the only one in the area that has grass. Beside each site there is a large enough area of grass to put a picnic table in. Because it doesn't rain, it costs them a lot to have grass. They told us that they are pretty flexible with most of the rules as long as you don't do anything to the grass. The dogs, Joy especially, have had a hard time adjusting. Joy still isn't very keen about doing her business in the dirt.

The Bullys

New Beginnings

Hi, everyone! Someone suggested that I start a blog, then Jenni started one and I thought "Hey, why not?" It's not like I'm FORCING anyone to read this, right? We arrived in CA on the 18th. We left Ohio on the 14th. We were very excited to be able to drive together this time. We had the Beetle shipped. It's supposed to arrive about July 10th. As we were leaving Mom & Dad's, Brian said that he expects that he'll do most of the driving. That was perfectly fine with me. However, we were almost to the Ohio/Indiana border when we pulled over at a rest stop. I said that maybe I should start driving because it was flat and there was very little traffic. I ended up driving more than my share!!! The next afternoon, he said "Boy, this is really nice to sit back and let you drive." I didn't mind at all. We weren't getting very good gas mileage through Missouri and Oklahoma. We were 20 miles from TX when Brian "just decided" to check the tire pressure. He put his hand on the tire and was shocked to feel no last row of tread on the inner most part of the tire. All four tires were that way. It was about 8 pm in the middle of nowhere. We went into the gas station and they gave us some names of tire places. We went back 3 miles. I was praying the whole way that they wouldn't rip us off. They refused to put new tires on, because they said that by the time we got to Amarillo we would need new tires again. They told us to go that night because it would be cooler, to drive slow, and to "keep our fingers crossed". It was about 100 during the day. We drove 200 miles to Amarillo that night. The next morning we called several places. The place that did the alignment said to get new tires on, then they could do the alignment on Monday. Brian begged him to do it that day (Friday), because we had to be at work on Tuesday. He called someone in and they got it done. We were on our way by 3 pm! I had been praying that it wouldn't be too hot, either. Harley would have never made it outside in that heat. It was nice and overcast, and the second place let them sit inside. We are so grateful that Brian "just happened" to feel the need to check the tires (which he's never done while we're traveling) and that it got fixed so quickly in the middle of nowhere. We could have had the tires blow out in the middle of the desert somewhere. We got better gas mileage after that, too. We had nothing else eventful happen along the way. On Monday we did some paper work for our job (that we had to complete there before we started). Tuesday, the 20th, we drove to Yosemite to meet Wes, Linda, and kids for the afternoon. I thought that it would take 3 hours to get there--it took 5! Luckily, they were running a little late, too, so they weren't just sitting there waiting on us. We started working on Wednesday, the 21st. It's a very small hospital--about 167 beds. They only do 1 or 2 heart surgeries a week. California has lots of laws about nurse:patient ratios, so we only have 3, or at the very most 4 patients every night. It's pretty nice for us. We worked last weekend. On Wednesday, we went to Hearst Castle. I'll talk more about that later. We did two of four tours this time and hope to do the other two soon. Maybe I'll have pictures by then. Thursday, we went to San Luis Obispo (SLO) for the weekly farmer's market. Every Thursday evening year around, they close down a street and have fresh local produce, BBQ pits, music and lots of other food. Just the kind of thing I love to do! We were going to go on a tour of a local vineyard today (there are over 200 in the area), but our truck brakes have been whining. Yesterday, they really started rubbing, so we got a little concerned. I thought that we had the brakes and rotors changed December 2004, but I guess that was only the front brakes. Firestone couldn't check the back brakes. So today we had to but new brakes and rotors for the back. We hope that we don't need anything else mechanical done anytime soon. We work again this weekend, but have July 4th off. Our campground is right across the road from the park where Paso Robles sets off their fireworks. The RV park is having a cookout, then we'll watch the fireworks. We were going to go to Pismo Beach for the fireworks, but they say it's pretty crowded. Next time I'll write more about the RV park, the weather, and the people we work with (this sentence was mostly written to remind me :) ), since I wrote such a long note this time. Love, Karla & Brian