Our first home in Santa Fe, New Mexico
Happy Camperbus 2 months ago // 2 responses // Outdoor Adventure Happy Camper Bus

Some other recent news involves us moving this week.

After leaving the ‘Solar Ark’, quite hastily at that, we were somewhat at a loss of what direction to travel next. We came into the town of Santa Fe with the intent of eating at a good bakery and finding some odd jobs to work so we could save money for gas.

We put an ad on Craigslist offering house/yard clean up for $15.00 an hour and much to our surprise, we were soon overwhelmed with jobs. We were working most days and sleeping in a Big Lots parking lot. It would have been Wal Mart, except that two weeks before we rolled into town, a couple in an RV emptied their sewage tank in the Wal Mart parking lot and Wal Mart was sited a very hefty ticket, therefore, they are now forced to refuse campers.

We met a lady named Kitty who hired us to help her clean and prepare her house and yard for sale. She is a wonderful woman and after a few weekends of working unbelievably hard for her, she offered us a place to stay. She is a Property Manager (and an attorney, dog sitter extraordinare, mother, gentle human and a barter master) and she told us she had this place that was not being rented at the time and if we were interested she would speak with the owner and see if we could stay there in exchange for working around the place.

Well, this sounded like a really welcomed idea and we went to see the place. Oh man, this day was the moment that I really began to fall in love with Santa Fe. This place is 5 miles away from the main part of the city. It turned out to be an outrageously beautiful home on 2.5 acres. We agreed to the work and were able to stay there that night. Our agreement spanned six weeks or so and really gave us an opportunity to soak in this place and decide that we were game for staying a while.

We completed several projects at the ‘Sierra Azul’ house (that is what we most commonly refer to it as) and had a lot of fun too. We dug a fire pit in the backyard and celebrated our one year anniversary by the fire pit under a meteor shower, played music and had international and fellow travelers as guests.

One of the projects rings particularly noteworthy. We were tasked with painting the exterior of the house and unfortunately, Smick lost a bet and had to complete the entire coat of primer with a 1.5 inch roller! Muawah, behold the evil ily!

As of last week we finished our work there and somehow managed to score an even sweeter deal at a sweeter pad. I really couldn’t have imagined that being possible one month ago, but I have to tell you that once things started rolling, we remained so happy and grateful that it seems there has been no stopping the gifts we have been given here.

Deep.