The balancing.

       When I say, "end to an awesome trip," I mean it was time to take my chauffeur/cross-country travel buddy/dinner date/fellow explorer/mom to the airport. It was bittersweet, but I was a little excited about going to the LAX. I kept telling her to keep her eyes peeled for all the celebs because I was sure she would make best friends with Ashton and Mila and they would ask me to be their live-in nanny. Or at least the Governator and he would offer to fund some kind of extravagant life for me. Unfortunately this didn't happen, but I did get some cool Hollywood magnets in the mail the next week. After successfully navigating the chaos that is LAX traffic, she made it to the gate and successfully back to sweet home Alabama.
       I, on the other hand, continued exploring. I decided to drive west until I hit the water and then go south, towards Long Beach. This ended up being the greatest of ideas and I stumbled upon the gem that is Manhattan Beach. Anyone who ever visits this little gem of a neighborhood and doesn't want to immediately to take up residence in one of the seaside bungalows fits in the Lohan/Bynes category. I mean this place is the adorable town where you can walk to breakfast and sit outside year-round, then stroll to some neat boutiques, and finish your day with a picnic on the beach, all with your puppy along side. And most people do.

With a day before beginning my first ever night shift, I took the opportunity to do absolutely nothing all day long. On Monday, I decided to begin the day of my all-nighter with a walk on the beach and an outdoor lunch at The GreenHouse with my Kindle. Then a nap and my first night at work. It went well but I began feeling a cold coming that progressed into the worst I can ever remember feeling. Lots of sleep followed and after about a week, I had decided that I wasn't on the verge of death. This could have been because of a combination of night shifts and the change of climate/extreme lack of humidity that is abundant in Alabama, but after it was over, I was finally able to drive home without being convinced my head was trying to explode through my sinuses.

The acclimating.

       As a local, I decided we should be doing the things that locals do. I mean, working a day here put me in the category of local, right? Regardless of the fact that I had been here a whopping five days, I was going to do all things native. With a little guidance of a more "long-term" local from work whom I had badgered to find out what us inhabitants do, Mom and I found a fun pizza place with quite the inspirational wall: Pieology. Think subway for pizza with just as many toppings and a great price. I've learned that a positive sign to look for is the packed restaurant at lunchtime, and this one definitely met that criteria.
       After lunch we found the beach again, which I've since learned does not have waves because of multiple small man made islands outside the Port. This was followed by a restaurant recommended by our AirBNB hosts called Belmont Brewing Company. It is on the beach with minimal parking, which required an experiment to see if my car would be the noble recipient of a wrong-way-parallel-parking ticket. It wasn't, luckily. But the view from the restaurant was stunning. This view inspired Mom's suppressed instagram talent and produced this beauty.

 The next day we got to move in to my home for the next twelve and a half weeks. The apartment isn't gigantic, but definitely all I need to be comfortable. Plus, it has a separate living room and bedroom, which was a luxury we took for granted until the Extended Stay and my-early-to-bed-for-early-mornings routine versus Mom's stay-up-late-because-why-not routine. We made a Target run as well as Best Buy (I have Netflix and an HD antenna in lieu of cable) and I felt like I was getting settled in. This ended with a token In-N-Out Burger run which happens to be located entirely too close to my apartment to not become a staple.

 The rest of the week was completed nicely with a good couple of days learning about the hospital and eating some great Mexican (not Tex-Mex, I think) and an adventure called Green Field's. Technically, Green Field Churrascaria, it is a Brazilian Steakhouse which means all-you-can-eat which means they have way lots of meat which means you are going to get all the protein you need for the next five seasons of your life in a super fancy setting. If you every have the opportunity to go, I highly recommend it, but proceed with caution. Certainly a great end to an awesome trip with a spectacular mom.

The doing.

On Monday it was time to get down to business. Being a little nervous about the infamous "LA traffic," Mom and I decided to give ourselves plenty of drive time to get to the hospital. We quickly learned that though LA traffic is bad, it's also lazy. Traffic here doesn't start until 7 or 8 am, and we left at close to 6:00 to make it about ten miles in order to arrive by 7:00. Lucky for us there is a Starbucks on literally every third corner here so we stopped for some coffee, and not a minute too soon for Mom (the self-confessed opposite of a morning person) who had the luxury of driving me to work while she was here since we had uno caro.

It's official!

I'll be honest, the excitement outweighed the nervousness of beginning work at a new hospital. I had recently passed my RNC-OB (registered nurse certified in inpatient obstetrics) exam and felt like no matter what, I know the nationally recognized standards and, even though I may not do things exactly the way the other local nurses do, things would get done safely and efficiently. Brookwood was the only hospital I'd had the pleasure of perfecting my nursing skills and I felt very grown finally embarking on my new normal as a travel nurse. This grown up feeling translated into my parents getting my first (and most likely last) set of selfies.

Hospital-provided scrubs are awesome sauce.

When the day ended, we, of course, had to celebrate. Since our arsenal of celebratory restaurant choices was essentially empty at this point, we found a place called the Elephant Bar Restaurant. Being from Alabama, how could this not have been anything but awesome?! And it was. Minus the fact that every single restaurant and bar here cards. Every. Single. Time. So after a good dinner (and possibly closing down the restaurant) it was back to the Extended Stay with a much accomplished day behind us.

The exploring.

       And now we have made it to Sunday. Which means more touristy exploring. Being within driving distance of Hollywood, we clearly had to find it. Mission: Chinese Theatre. With the hour drive behind us, we found a parking deck half a block from Hollywood Blvd and headed towards the Theatre. While walking on the side street, Mom and I see someone who looks very much like Johnny Depp and get a tiny bit excited, only to be let down once he gets closer and we see he has a little too much meat on his bones. So we make it to the Hollywood Walk of Fame and on to Chinese Theatre with all of the footprints and signatures of the Hollywood elite. This was awesome. Lots of celebrities and personalities and handprints and signatures and room for plenty more.

"Sid, may you never die till I kill you" Humphrey Bogart

From TCL Chinese Theatre, formerly Grauman's Chinese Theatre, formerly Mann's Chinese Theatre, you can see the Roosevelt Hotel, the location of filming of the Jimmy Kimmel show, El Capitan theater, and Hollywood and Highland. So pretty much all the Hollywood I could want within walking distance. Happy girl.

Yep, this is one I took a picture of.

Technically the theater is a part of The Hollywood and Highland Center which is gigantically huge. It's also where we had a good shot at the Hollywood sign. And my day was made.

Being the local SoCal girl that I am now, let me give you a little advice: If you make it to this area you have to at least drive through Griffith Park and by the Griffith Observatory. Prepare to fall in love with the view. It's amazingly astonishingly beautiful, day or night. The homes on the way there aren't bad either. 

Once we picked our jaws back up, Mom was on yelp.com again finding some where to eat. Yelp suggested an authentic Thai restaurant and we accepted. There are so many different cultures here that I've found most restaurants are very authentic.

This place is amazing.

The lodging.

       Now it's our first Saturday in the Los Angeles area, and being true southerners at heart, that meant finding a sports bar to watch football. Even though football here starts at 9am (yes, NINE in the morning with the time change) we firmly believed in trying all the breakfast places available to us so, that was our first mission. We had passed a cute breakfast place on our walking the previous day that we decided to try out. It was called Crème de la Crepe and it was just as cute as it sounds. Our waiter had a french accent and we were 100% in love with it, so much that Mom talked me into trying a french press coffee (or however you order that pitcher thing with the pushy-down screen thing that I don't really understand - here's a picture).

       When we finished eating we asked our french waiter where we could watch football and were directed toward the beach, which can only be good, right? The bar was your typical sports bar with multiple tvs, about 2 of which had college football on them. We talked to the hostess about changing the channel on any of the tv's to the Alabama-Florida game, and after asking approximately 7 more times, we were watching Alabama play! One thing I learned about California culture was that "football days" here are considered Thursday, Sunday, and Monday. Weird NFL folks.
       After watching Alabama win, we unfortunately had to pack up and leave the awesome downtown gem that was the Art District condo we were staying in. Now with travel nursing, the company I'm using will find and pay for housing for me while on assignment (awesome, right?!?). Well, unfortunately, we couldn't get into the apartment I would be in for the majority of the assignment until the following Wednesday so my company had an extended stay room arranged for us from Saturday to Wednesday. This wasn't the luxury suite it sounds like. It had a small kitchen, bathroom, queen-sized bed, tv, and less than desirable smell. After soaking much of the upholstery in febreeze spray, which proved unsuccessful, Mom took care of the smell (that I probably would have lived with for a few days) by taking our microwave to the front desk and exchanging it, thus removing the I-thought-I-could-dry-my-phone-by-microwaving-it smell that preceded us. And we slept well.

The discovering. From Berlin to Little Women.

My first official morning in Long Beach started off just the way I would have wanted it. With a yelp.com search. Then a local restaurant called The Breakfast Bar that was only a few blocks from the beach. By this time we were almost mostly sure that we could handle walking around downtown Long Beach. We ate local and talked to locals and asked directions from the one girl that wasn't a local. But got good directions and managed to stumble upon the beach. The Pacific Ocean.

After trying to figure out where we were supposed to walk on the sidewalk as to not get hit by any rogue bicyclers or those weird broken-half-skateboard-things, we made it to Berlin. Berlin the coffee shop, that's also connected to a real, live record store. With listening stations and all the Michael Jackson cd's you could want. Then came a nap. And with the help of yelp we found Pine Avenue and Alegria Cocina Latina. Since they're known for their sangria, we clearly had to judge it for ourselves. They passed. And of course sit outside. Everywhere. So while we're eating dinner outside, we noticed a few cameramen across the street at The Federal Bar. After a little staring and making fun of people trying to get their car valet parked who were in the way of our snooping, I figured out it was a few of the cast members of Little Women: LA. Since I literally have seen it for a combined total of 4.5 minutes I couldn't tell you who exactly it was but I was pretty stoked to say I saw a tv show, even if it does air on Lifetime (it still counts).

The trek. Part 3.

The people that live near Route 66 don't realize how cool it is to live near Route 66. It's really cool. Main Street of America. The Mother Road. Hip enough to have a song, tv show, and animated motion picture about a ROAD. That's one magnificent road. 

The last day of our ridiculous/astonishing drive began in a national forest, which didn't disappoint. Then we entered California, which was pretty anticlimactic if I'm being honest. I kind of imagined flashing lights and palm trees and lots of Brad Pitt lookalikes waiting just for me. But it was a desert. An absurdly, amazingly hot desert known as the Mojave where all you need is a Dairy Queen attached to a gas station to establish a town and the temperature doesn't get below 99 degrees. Mom did have a surprisingly good time finding dust devils, though.

We got to our destination, Long Beach, California not a minute too soon. 

We went out on a limb and found "the best Airbnb in downtown Long Beach" (according to the owners) and hastily found District Wine. Good place, good wine, and two girls who were a tiny bit nervous to walk a couple blocks in a big city but pulled our shoulders back and looked like we belonged there.
 And we did.

The trek. Part 2.

Once we woke up and realized that we really were insane and driving 2,000 miles across the country we decided to get all touristy with it. Cue The Cadillac Ranch. Some rich guy in Texas had some land and hired a few hippies in the good ole days to do some "modern art" and this is what happened. So good.

 It didn't start out all spray-painty but was actually meant to be art about the evolution of Cadillacs. The spray paint was never discouraged, however. 



And then there was New Mexico. Holy cow. It's like the shy girl in class that all the sudden you see on a weekend and she's a dang supermodel. This state is gorgeous. I firmly believe it is a tragedy how little the beauty of this state is discussed.

 The last state of the day was Arizona. It definitely had the biggest sky I've ever seen in all my 27 years. So big. And a little scary. Not somewhere I would be comfortable getting stranded without a big buff guy with a heart of gold and an all-terrain vehicle close behind. 

This is the UP house, right?

So we ended our night in Flagstaff, AZ with 1561 miles down, 500 to go, and a new love of Route 66.

The trek. Part 1.

In order to get the most exciting experience possible and start with a bang, I decided to take a job in Los Angeles county, California. Which is quite a distance from Birmingham, Alabama. This is what a car looks like that has everything but furniture in it for a cross country drive to a climate you're not entirely sure about. Notice the one tiny black suitcase in the back for my mom. Don't worry about not the limited visibility out the back window, there was about a 12 inch by 4 inch window we could see out.

The ride was pretty uneventful until Arkansas. While Mom was asleep I noticed that I had to hold the steering wheel a little far to the left to go straight. Then a lovely passenger of a passing car got my attention and signaled that my back tire was flat so I promptly exited the interstate to find none other than an Alabama nail with a California dream taking up residence in my tire, as well as probably the only tire repairing gas station in or around Little Rock. Talk about luck.

After 30 minutes and some lessons on tire pressure we were back on our way. We finished day one in two of the most appreciated beds in Clinton, Oklahoma.

The story. And it begins... About me.

Welcome. Hello, my name is Valerie. Let me tell you about myself and how I've begun the most exciting journey of all my 27 years. To start off, I'm a nurse. More specifically, I'm a labor and delivery nurse. I love it. I love all things about it. I love helping and coaching someone through the happiest moment of their life and I am grateful when I am able to show love and support to someone who is going through the most difficult and heart-breaking thing they could ever imagine. I discovered my love for this field at Brookwood Medical Center in Birmingham, Alabama. With the guidance of a team of men and women, including doctors and nurses, I was able to flourish and became involved in all things labor and delivery related. After 5 years with this excellent hospital, I decided I would like to adventure out and learn all I could from other units and nurses across the country, as well as see all that this beautiful, vast country has to offer. So I looked into travel nursing. Which leads us to now...