Road Trip with Me: Solar Eclipse Part 4

It's time to join Camille and her husband, Bryce, on the final part of their journey to see the solar eclipse and beyond. If you haven't caught the previous episodes, you really should take the opportunity to go back and listen to those in order. Start with episode 96. 97, 98, and finally, this episode, 99. It is quite a journey.

After 33 days on the road, she has real insight into traveling with a trailer rather than a motor home, and the difficulties, and fun they had along the way. It was intense and exhilarating and exhausting.

But they got to visit old friends and new friends and favorites spots along the way. There were even some turtles and fish involved. So, once again, let’s join Camille as she continues this last part of her journey, a journey which incorporated remote work into all aspects. Listen as she tells you how.

You're listening to the remote work retirement show. I'm your host, Camille Attell. And this is the only show that helps semi-retirees figure out their remote work options.

I believe the remote work is the new retirement plan and that many retirees have both the ability and desire to work how they want so they can live how they want. Let's dig into today's episode....
 

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  **DISCLAIMER: This podcast is not a substitute for professional consultation. For any retirement or income-related matters, it is best to work with a professional advisor.**
  
  Welcome to The Remote Work Retirement Show, the only show that is dedicated to remote work for semi-retirees, people leaving the workforce, and people working in retirement to help them have the peace of mind that they can live how they want without the fear of running out of money.
 
 

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Transcript

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In episode 99, it is our final installment of our four-part series called road trip with me to the solar eclipse. You're listening to the remote work retirement show. I'm your host, Camille Attell. And this is the only show that helps semi retirees figure out the remote work options. I believe the remote work is the new retirement plan and that many retirees have both the ability and desire to work, how they want so they can live how they want. Let's dig into today's episode.... Hello, and thank you so much for joining me for part four of our road trip series, all about going to see the solar eclipse and beyond. If you haven't caught the previous episodes and you really want to go back and listen to those in order. It starts with episode 96. 97 98. And finally this 1 99. It is quite a journey. My husband, Bryce, and I really bit off a lot in this trip and I cover a lot of ground. In those first three episodes. So the episode today, we're really going to cap off this 33 day trip a little over a month trip. Which I have told people felt more like a year. And I want to pause here and if you're a traveler, then you know what I mean? When you take a trip and you pack. Tons of things into that trip. You'll live a lot of life, which is amazing. But also it's a stark contrast. I believe to our everyday lives that often have patterns. And, you know, we do the same things every day, typically. And it starts to feel like, you know, one long day, at least it does for me. So when you have a pattern interrupt and you travel and you do all these different things. It really does make you realize how much life you live in a really short time. So I want to kick off today by saying that this was one of the most. Intense trips. I think I've ever taken. And I have done a lot of traveling. My husband Bryce and I have been to places like, uh, Nepal, where we tracked up to Mount Everest base camp. That was a pretty intense trip. We have summited Mount Kilimanjaro. And in Tanzania, which was also a really intense trip. When we had our honeymoon back in 2014. We did this whirlwind trip through three different countries and about three weeks. So we've done a lot of pretty intense journey, but this time. It was different because we were in a travel trailer. And I talk about that in the other episodes, a travel trailer is new for us. We had always had a class, a motor home. And we learned pretty quickly that traveling in a travel trailer is just a vastly different experience. We were in a car instead of a big cushy motor home. And the travel trailer is about 21 feet. And even though it's small and compact and I suppose, light for a travel trailer, it was only about 3,600 pounds. It was still a bit heavy for the car. And so in a few episodes ago, I talked about how on the way to Texas, which is where we watched the solar eclipse. We were getting blown around a lot in the west Texas wind. And I thought that was bad. Until we started making our way home going west and we just hit all kinds of. I don't know, wind and cross winds and headwinds and truck traffic and single lane roads. And it just felt like every single drive day. Was some sort of new, I mean, adventure makes it sound really fun, but it was, it was really hard. It was hard on the body. And I think in some ways, psychologically, too, because you just knew you were in for another really long drive day. And to be fair. My husband Bryce did all of the driving, every single mile of driving. And we kept saying, well, today's the day I'm going to drive. You know, today's the day I should give it a shot. I don't love driving RVs and travel trailers. But then every day we tried. There was some new weather event. And so it just, it never panned out. So it was even harder for him, but he put on a brave face. He is cool as the other side of the pillow. That's his phrase. And, uh, he got us through, I mean, he really was the real hero of the journey. And so in addition to all those drive days, and I counted it up out of 33 days on the road, 13 of them were drive days. So, you know, we packed all those drive days in and we packed a lot of life in and did a bunch of fun things and different things and new things. So I do want to talk a little bit about some of the things that we did after we left the solar eclipse, because. That's where we left off in last week's episode is I, I took you through what the solar eclipse was like. And then some of the remaining events that we participated in. At the Escapers and escapees solar eclipse event. So after that event, we had some decisions to make. We were like, well, we could. You know, start to head home and hit some of our favorite places because we've done this route many, many times. We know all of our places we'd love to go. And we thought, well, we could do that. Um, but. What if we kind of ventured out and did some new things we've never done before. So we were like, well, we're in Paris, Texas, and it's not that far to go to Dallas. Where Bryce has some friends. And I learned while we were on the road that a new Meow Wolf had opened up in Dallas. If you don't know what Meow Wolf is. Let me pause for a minute and tell you, this is one of my favorite places to go. The first time we went was in Santa Fe, New Mexico back in 20, I believe 2016. And this is a massive art installation. But it's hard to explain if you've never been it's a, it's an immersive experience. It's a storyline. It's got things like multiple dimensions. You're in one space and then you open a door and you can walk through another space. And that essentially takes you into some new dimension. There's the most amazing art you've ever seen. There's music. There's things you can touch and play with. There's. I don't even know how to explain it. I just, just go. So there is a Meow Wolf in Santa Fe. That's the original, there is a Meow Wolf in Denver. That's I believe the biggest there's one in Las Vegas that I've also been to. Very cool. Very different than the one in Santa Fe. And then I learned that they had opened this one up in Dallas apparently last year, which I didn't know about. And now they're also opening one in Houston and I learned in Los Angeles, 2026. So they are expanding. They are becoming, I feel like. The strangest alternative to Disneyland. Let me put it that way. That's how I feel about it. I mean, I feel like the brand is growing. But it's like, It's just so weird. I don't want to say, if you love Disney, you're going to love me. I'll Wolf, but that's just the closest thing I could think of. As an example to compare it to. So we thought, all right, we'll go to Dallas. We'll visit Bryce's friends and my friends too. And then we'll go to Meow Wolf. Why not? We're so close. Ha in air quotes, you know, when you think you're close to something in an RV, you have to really factor in that. It's going to take you maybe one and a half to two times longer than in a car. Well, at least in a travel trailer, the one we had that's true because our car was just a wee bit under. Under powered. And so it just took forever to get to places. Now, in addition to that, we also wanted to visit the customer experience ambassador for remote work school. Her name is Ray. She's been with us for almost a year now, and she lives in an area that's actually closer to Houston. So we were sitting there thinking, well, Hmm. How do we want to do this? Did we go to Dallas and then down? And then we need to cut across to get back to the west or do we go down first and then back up to Dallas? Right? So we had all these decisions to make. So we decided to go to Dallas first and then we moved along to go visit Ray, which was really cool. Got to hang out with her for a couple of days. And then we decided to start heading back west. So that whole little jog. Took about another week. So it really did extend our trip because again, you got to factor in drive days, and then once you get somewhere, you don't want to just leave in one day. You want to. You know, enjoy yourself and stay for a couple of days and also take a breath. So that added another week to our trip, which was totally worth it. But then when we started heading west. It just felt like the drive days got harder and harder. As I mentioned. And so every single day, I just felt like the hardest drive day until the next day. And then we realized, oh no, that's the hardest drive day. So as we continued going west, it felt like the trip got a bit more physically taxing. And I think in some ways then psychologically taxing, right? Because then, you know, you've got so many more days left and sure. You're excited. About all the things you're going to do, but now you're starting to feel like it's been a while we've been on the road a long time and while on the road, we had to also work. So here's the part of the episode where I actually do link it back to remote work. So it's not just an episode about my travels. It is also about remote work. And I talked about this a lot in the last two episodes that this was the first time being on the road where remote work felt hard, harder than usual. And I'm not going to rehash all of that. Cause if you want to go back and, and hear about. Some of the things I learned about working from the road now that felt different than it did, you know, 5, 6, 7 years ago. I then go back and listen to that. I do offer some solutions as well. But it just felt harder. It just seemed like we were in places where the internet was less reliable. We stayed at campgrounds where the wifi wasn't really, Y you know, good working wifi. Luckily we have backups. But it was just really difficult to keep a consistent schedule. While traveling to all of these places and cramming in a lot of fun things. But I did manage to pull it off. I still was able to do the coaching circles in remote work school. I still stayed on top, mostly on top of the tasks that I had to do. And I think it proves once again, that remote work is a truly viable option. It's certainly viable for people who don't move around as much as I do. If you live at home or if you travel slow. Then it's absolutely viable and it's even viable. If you do fast travel like I did. And you go to all of these different places. But you really do need to have plan a, B and C so that if something happens to your internet or you're in a weird place. You, you know, what you can do. So some of the things that I did, go to like the conference centers at a, at a campground as an example. Sometimes I would go to a coffee shop and use the internet there. Um, or go into a Walmart. Where I know I can get on the internet depending on the Walmart. So you just have to think through. Some of these scenarios and make sure that you, you know, What the options are now. You know, I lived on the road for four years, so I'm pretty good with knowing that if I get into a jam. I pretty much know, you know, where to go, what to do and what my fallback plans are. So it all worked out, you know, I was able to work remotely enough. I definitely had to change my schedule around. That's another benefit of working remotely. The way I do that is being able to control my schedule and change my hours and, you know, work at different times of the day. But it wasn't easy and I don't want to sugar coat it. Right. I know there were a lot of people out there that tout, oh, you can work from anywhere and you can be a digital nomad and, you know, lay on the beach and rake in the Jo. And I am not that person. I'm the person that's going to tell you. Sometimes it's hard. Sometimes it's grueling. Sometimes it doesn't work, but you can get by. So that's, that's the silver lining. So as we head west, there are some hotspots that we really love. And I just want to share those with you because. Um, some of these are new. These are new things we had never done before. And some of them we've done many times and we, we, we love them every time. So one of the new things we did is we had, as we head west, is we went to a place called bell Maria. This is in Texas. It's about an hour west of Fort Stockton. Now Fort Stockton is where we often stay overnight in a Walmart parking lot because they allow boondocking. We have done that so many times that it's just kind of. I don't know routine for us. So we assumed that that's what we were going to do. However, we ran into some Escapers at the solar eclipse event who told us that, well, he just drive another hour. You can go to this cool place called Balmorhea state park. Where you can swim in natural Springs, you're going to see fish and turtles, and it's just really cool. Which was shocking that we had never heard of this because we have literally driven through this area. I don't know how many times, so that's, that's one of the things that's so cool about having a, an RV community that you can tap into is you can learn about all the different locations that maybe you don't know about. So I'm really grateful to. Um, to get that information because we did in fact go to Balmorhea. It was really, really cool. It's a, it's a very humble town. Um, the state park is a little further away. So I think the town of Bel Maria serves as a place where people go. Uh, and then, and then branch out to some of the, uh, the state park areas in the lake and things like that. So it was really amazing. I mean, it was this cool natural spring. I think it's. It somewhere in the mid 70 degree while the water, which we're from California. So that's fine for us. Other people might think it's cold, but we didn't think that at all we did. We saw turtles. Uh, fish, uh, really interesting. Um, I don't know if they were LG blooms or what they were, but you know, different mosses and I don't know, it was just cool. Uh, I highly encourage you to go if you're driving through that area, it's really interesting. Uh, it's just a fun day. We hung out all day. In fact, it was our 10 year wedding anniversary. And we spent it just relaxing. He was probably one of the most relaxing days on the trip that I had or that we had because so many of the other days were filled with, you know, driving or doing a bunch of things. So that was a lovely, lovely day. And if you listen to the first episode in this series, I mentioned that I had started a book, which I have not read a fiction book in a very long time. So I started a book called remarkably bright creatures, which I thought was about an octopus. And it turns out the octopus. Is really not the main character. And it was, uh, it was just a really beautiful book. I actually finished it. That day I finished the last half of the book. I have not read a book like that. You know, in less than a month in a really, really long time. And I know some folks listening are avid readers and probably are like, why did it take you so long? It's just been hard for me in the last few years to focus on something. From end to end like a book because you know, when you run a business, And you're responsible for literally hundreds of customers at a time. It doesn't leave a lot of brain space to do other things that you need to focus on. So, you know, it was, it was a real luxury to have that focus time to actually finish that book. And I highly recommend the book. It was just lovely. It was just such a beautiful read. I know some people listening have read it and love it too. So, but if you haven't put it on your list, So after bell Maria, we kept traveling west. We stopped in a few places here or there, but I want to tell you about one of our favorite places and that is Las Cruces, New Mexico. So a lot of folks know New Mexico for places like Santa Fe, Albuquerque townhouse. And maybe you're listening and you've been to Las Cruces, but maybe you haven't because I think it's a little bit understated, but I love it. We love it. There's old town Mysia, which was very historic old Adobe buildings. And it's just a really, I don't know, for me, very comfortable place. And we really enjoy all parts of New Mexico. We just love it. And, um, there's an RV park there that we've stayed at every time called the Hacienda. It's a little on the higher end. But there are good reasons for it. It's in a great location. They have a jacuzzi, which is unusual for a lot of RV parks. They have really good wifi. Also unusual and they have a really great. Um, I don't know what you call it. It's not a lodge, but it's an area inside the building where there's a fireplace and couches and they have an outside area. So it's kind of a luxury stay. And we did that for a couple of nights and just had a really nice time in Las Cruces. But of course we were only there for one day and then we had to get back on the road again. And so we drove to places like Tucson. And then Uma, because this is on our route home and we love Tucson. However, it was just really hot and it was only April. And even inside the travel trailer with the air conditioning on full blast, it was, it was still. It was still hot. Like it was just hard to get. Cool. I think our cats were kind of miserable. And then in Uma, it was even worse. I mean, I don't know, these are places that I really enjoy at certain times of the year. But I just don't know if they're going to be. You know, a four season place for us to live and we are looking at. Uh, you know, other places to live other than California. When we finally decide to leave California, I don't know when that's going to happen, but that's the long-term plan. And then we finally got home. And if you listened to the first few episodes, I talked a little bit about starting to think about what I might want to do with this travel trailer, because I felt like I didn't know if it was going to be a longterm solution. So as soon as we got home, Made the decision that we're going to sell it. So this will be the shortest time I've ever owned anything like this. Uh, yeah, I jumped into it with the best of intentions and I had a vision that this was going to be the new vehicle that we would travel in. But after this trip, it turns out is just not practical. And even though I looked into renting it out because, you know, if I rent it out, I can keep it for other trips, maybe down the road. It's just not going to work out. And so why rent it out? Ha, you know, continue to lose. Value in it. Uh, it just, it didn't make any sense. So I found a consignment, a dealer, and the very next day we drove it there and fingers crossed that it sells pretty quickly and. For an amount of money that I'm not going to take a massive hit. So, you know, put some positive vibes out there for me on that one. So, we've been home for just a few days. And today I'm actually getting on a plane and just a couple of hours to fly to Chicago. To visit my friend, Liz Wilcox, who is competing on a survivor season 46 of survivor. She is in the top seven. Now, as of the time of this recording tomorrow night, we will watch it live with her at a live watch party. I hope she doesn't get voted off. Cause it would be really exciting to see her continue on in the game. So lots of travel. And I'm still squeezing in remote work where I can. And so that's it, this wraps up the four part series. I really hope that you enjoyed hearing about these travels. I hope if you're someone who also would love to travel and work remotely, that this series served as inspiring for you, that you, you gleaned from this, not only. Entertainment, but also maybe some education and some tips. And, ideally just knowing that it is possible. So we will return to our regularly scheduled episodes. All about remote work. I've got some updates for you about what's happening in the wide world of. Work jobs. And of course, remote work. Thanks so much for listening. If you're looking to get back into the workforce, change jobs, work remotely, or learn artificial intelligence, check out my free remote work training so you can get ahead of the trends and stay ahead of the pack. Click the link in the show notes, or go to www.camilahealth.com and press the free training button.