Alas, we only stayed at Happy's one night. We were a little frustrated with ourselves--why did we bail so early? Basically, we were too drained to work and too used to our routine of complete independence; we felt odd and slightly stuck residing in another person's home doing their chores. For me, I missed our tent, missed simply lounging at our campsite and reading in mid-afternoon, knowing that I literally had no obligations.
So, we left. Since it was already getting late and we had no real destination in mind, we decided to drive back up to Sedona for the night and figure out where to go the next morning.
And here is where I want to explain to you our ways of thinking when it came to finances. As you've probably realized, Nic and I are very frugal, minimal people. In total, we only spent $800 each on the road, which includes food, campsite/park entrance fees, and gas money. Looking back at the experience, we may have been a little too cheap; it took me a good day and a half to rationalize a vitamin water I bought at a gas station, and Nicole would scoff every time a mocha-iced coffee would be upwards of $3.
Still, we had a system. Throughout the trip, our parents were very generous when it came to lending us some extra cash for either our safety or comfort. For example, there was an instance where the only campsite we stayed at in Albuquerque was in a dangerous area; the night we slept there a bunch of motor-bikes were stolen ( I guess the barbed wire surrounding the site didn't phase us at the time). Since it was the only campground around, my mom said she would pay for us to check into a nice hotel the following night, rather than taking the chance of someone coming in and either viciously murdering us or stealing our gas stove. Another example: due to the only fight we had over a lack of showers, Nic's mom graciously deposited $30 into her account so we could treat ourselves to some comfort food to get over the quarrel.
So, this is how we thought: Mom payed for a hotel room? That saves us a good $20 we would have spent on a campground! Now, we can use that money to go have breakfast at a diner, rather than eat oatmeal. The check was only $15? We still have $5; let's get coffee tomorrow before our long drive. Your dad gave you twenty-bucks? Let's put that toward a motel room; now, the room is only "$30," rather than $50, which means we're only spending $15 each, which is only a few extra dollars than what we would each pay to split a campsite! But-- remember the time we slept in that state park for free? That free night covers the extra bucks we spent on the hotel room. Therefore: hotel room and diner breakfast= totally rational.
Get it?
In other news, feel free to comment on the posts. DO IT. Please? This whole blogging thing is still very new to me and I don't know if I like it yet. Sometimes I think that I am only writing to myself, which would be really odd since this is a public site. So leave a comment! Constructive criticism accepted, a statement of praise and astonishment highly encouraged. Or you can just say hi or tell me a joke. Also, you can become a "follower" if you want. I don't really know what the purpose of this is, but it makes me feel popular. And since this blog is a self-indulgent public-sphere of my thoughts of my trip, it really is all about me, right?
a side note about wwoofing and happy's. laura and i both agree that we would love to wwoof in the future. On our trip we just became so used to being on our own and being completely spontaneous that it became hard to use to become part of the happy oasis family, especially when we weren't learning anything about farming and were instead cleaning pools!
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