Lyndsey's Travel Nursing Experiences: Adventure!

Crescent Beach

I have a couple interesting stories. I guess I will start with an encounter on one of my hikes. I had decided I was going to do this one hike that I had read about but for the life of me could not find the trail. I drove to this place called Hug Point that apparently a trail was supposed to start at. Well I looked everywhere and could not find the stinkin trail. So I just decided to go do this other trail I have done before. I drove into the parking area and look across and see a bunch of elk just chillin in the grass right next to where everyone parks. Not even caring about any people or cars around. It was cool. The elk here are much smaller it seems than they are in Colorado. Then I discovered a new trail that I didn't know existed that went down to a beach called Crescent beach. Not too long of a hike, but it was an awesome little hike to the beach. I started this at about 6:30, so probably good it wasn't that long. Didn't see one person on the hike or at the beach, so it was great. And the beach was gorgeous. A little waterfall going down the cliff, lots of rocks, and NO ONE ELSE there!! haha. I need to go down there on a nice day earlier in the day so I can spend some time down there. I was excited to find this trail. It was funny at the top because there is a sign that said the trail was very narrow and steep so experienced hikers only. Man, I feel sorry for those who decided not to go down just because of that sign. Sure it was steep and narrow, but only like 1 1/4 miles so it wasn't like you had a long way to go if something happened. When I got back to the parking area I put all my stuff in my car and got a little weirded out by this older hippie looking dude sitting in his car next to mine. But didn't think a whole lot about it when I went to go check out this little viewpoint area. As a was approaching the end of the path up to the viewpoint I see this guy standing there with his arms around someone else. Whenever he heard or saw me coming he pulled away really quickly and they were two guys. They looked all embarrassed. I just looked away, acting like I didn't see them. I walked up, said hello, then just went on my business looking around. Too bad I left my camera in the car so I could make myself look busy taking pictures. Can you say AWKWARD!!! Pretty view, hard to enjoy completely with the awkwardness of my embarrassing them. As I was walking back to the car I was thinking maybe I should have made a joke and said something like it was ok, they didn't have to mind me being there. But then I decided that may have made it worse and its not really like me to say something like that! Then as I was approaching my car the old hippie dude was walking back from behind my car to get back into his car. I wasn't sure where he was coming from so as he was driving away I memorized his license plate just in case my camera was not in my car anymore. My car was locked, sure, but there was no one else around, I got a little worried. No worries though, all was good.

I guess the hospital still had a lot of shifts they needed covered so they hired another travel nurse. She started last week. I was nervous at first for some reason just because I wasn't sure how we would get along. Not sure why I felt that way. It was a day shift we were working and the new traveler, Jennifer, actually got to "orient." So she was working with myself and one other nurse. Nice for her, when I started I just went right into nights, no orientation. That's ok though, it worked out. Anyway, I ended up being in charge of kind of showing Jennifer around and doing some orientation with her. Can get interesting having a traveler orient another traveler. But not long after I first met her I decided I really liked her. We hit it off right away! It was awesome. So this was a Thursday that she started and the next Saturday we hung out the whole day. I was wanting to go to a Farmers Market and invited her along. It was fun! I got a lettuce pot (should produce fresh lettuce for me for 5-6 weeks or more), some hummus, and a crab! I was very excited to finally make my own crab, I will tell about this experience next! Then I dragged Jennifer along with me to a Scentsy party at another co-workers house. It was tons of fun. I already have enough Scensty stuff right now so I didn't get anything else, but it was all people I work with at the party and it was great to get to hang out with them and socialize. Then Jennifer and I went to grab dinner and hang some more. It was a lot of fun. Her husband is getting his Phd so he has like three or four months off so this is their little vacation time while she works her three days a week. It's going to be great for them. They are excited to do all the stuff around here and just be here. They came all the way from Montreal! Oh, and I forgot to mention she lives right across from me. haha, she is living in the same apartment rentals I am. Crazy! Her place is a lot smaller and older appliances and furniture, but it's cute. I feel so weird living in the nicer, bigger place all by myself. It will be cool having someone else around to hang out with.

My contract here is supposed to be until June 12th, but I was thinking they were going to need to until the end of June, so had already kind of planned that. Come to find out today that they could use me throughout all of September, possibly until November because there is another nurse going on maternity leave in August. And there is a span of about two weeks in July that for some reason they wouldn't need me so that would just be like a two week vacation. It is so tempting for me just to say YES, I would love to stay. The people are so great here, I have lots of people to hang out with. There is so much to do in the area, the place I am living is awesome. The weather I have heard is amazing in August and September. Would have to deal with tons of people here in July and August, but I guess it would be worth it for the weather in September and a big beach volleyball tournament in August. Oh and I guess there is a cool run they do from east of Portland to Seaside in October I think. Anyway, there are lots of positives to staying here longer. But my purpose and goal of travel nursing is to get to go to many places, to see and explore different areas. I don't want to be a travel nurse forever. I eventually do want to settle down, haha. So as great as it is here and as much as I like it here and the people here, I really don't think I should stay. And it's a small hospital, which I think most assignments will be, but it would be nice to get back into a bigger hospital at some point for the experience. Anybody have any input? I am definitely going to stay the couple weeks longer through the end of June, but beyond that I just don't really know if I should stay or not. It will be hard saying bye to people I have met here. This is only my 2nd assignment. I am glad things are going so good so far, but I kind of hope I don't have to keep making decisions like this! haha. Better than absolutely hating it and being miserable I guess!

Ok, so my crab dinner! I have been wanting to make a crab while I was here, since its the only seafood I like. So at the farmers market they had some decent size ones. I got a pretty big one for only $9, a lot better than in a restaurant. Jennifer was looking at the crab and turned it right side up, the person selling them got all upset and said they HAVE to stay upside down, the wise all the flavor juices leak out. Good thing to learn. It was pre-cooked, I wanted a live one for the whole experience and I was worried that it wouldn't be as good pre-cooked. I also didn't have any clue how to re-heat it or how to clean it. I just decided to boil it again for a short time. So boiled it up, made some butter with lemon, and discovered I had no crackers to crack the legs with. Hmm, what to do. Decided to use the handles on my can opener! They worked ok, ended up using my hands for most of it though. The crab was so good! I was shocked at the flavor. Haven't had it any better in a restaurant. Pre-cooked is not a bad way to do it I guess. THen I had the problem of what to do about the center. I started with the legs because I knew I liked the legs, but had absolutely no clue what to do about the rest of the crab, I didn't even know meat was in the middle. But I couldn't not eat the center, I had to get in this whole experience! I got online and looked up how to do it. You turn the crab right side up and just peel apart the top from the bottom, comes apart very easily. Then you have to clean out all the innards and gills, GROSS!! This was so disgusting. The gills were cool, but gross. I think there is a part of the innards that people eat but it is "an acquired taste." Something I don't even want to attempt! After you clean it out you have to break it in half to get to the meat, this was fairly easy as well. I got that part all cleaned out and finally discovered where the meat was. I was very nervous about this meat. Even though I like crab, the whole time I am eating it I am always afraid I am going to get a gross, fishy bite. When this happens it gets regurgitated out of my mouth very quickly! My family have witnessed this disgusting event! I was very afraid this would happen with this center meat. I was surprised at how much meat I was able to get out of the center. Very glad I didn't just throw it away. I put some lemon butter on top and dug in. It was fantastic! No fishy taste at whatsoever. All in all, it was a fun, interesting, and enjoyable experience. A little disappointed not to get the full live crab cooking experience, but I think I am ok with it as well. I would have been scared cooking a live crab by myself probably. Talk about an adrenaline rush! It was scary putting it in the boiling water even though I knew it was already dead!

After I butchered it!

I have been having this problem with vertigo when I run outside for quite a while. Have not been able to relate it to anything. Don't think it is due to altitude, temperature, time of day, what I eat, what I drink. I cannot figure it out. It only happens when I run outside, never on the treadmill, and I never know when it will happen. Sometimes it happens after two miles, sometimes I can go six miles and it won't happen. But it makes me so mad because it is keeping me from getting to run outside. I wanted to do this awesome 10k at a lake last weekend and didn't because I was not able to get myself to get through my runs outside without it happening to me. It gets so bad that I can barely stand up straight and come very close to throwing up. Then I feel like crap for a while after I am done, it's terrible. It has only ever happened to me from running. The other day I was hiking Saddle Mountain, pretty steep hike, not too long though, 2.5 miles. I wanted to hike at a good pace because I am hiking Mt. st. helens this weekend. Got to get myself ready! When I was almost to the top, the vertigo hit me. But I knew I was almost there so figured I would be fine. Got to the top and had to sit for a while for it to pass. Drank tons of water. Then on the way down it was so bad I had to concentrate to not throw up. Had to stop a few times on the way down. It was terrible, and I couldn't figure out why it was happening to me when I was hiking downhill, so weird. If anyone has any ideas of why this might be happening I am very ready to listen! I have been really nervous about climbing st. helens, but this makes me even more nervous now. UGH!!!

My biking buddy, John decided to take me on this crazy challenging trail the other day. And I only have pics on my phone unfortunately because it was a different approach to an area I have hiked to before so didn't really think I would need any pics. Failure on my part, I need to ALWAYS have my camera with me. I really missed it. This trail was crazy! He warned me it would be a challenge. The trail started off pretty steep and right away there was a huge tree we had to scramble over. The trail had many tree trunk obstacles on it. Started off walking my bike a lot. I asked him if I would be walking my bike more than riding it because that was not going to be fun. I was dripping sweat after the first 30 min of the trail. Then he told me the trail was like 10miles long! Really, I was NOT going to enjoy doing that for 10miles! And with John, you really don't know what to expect. He doesn't really think too much about what he's doing, he just kind of does things! So you have to be ready for an adventure with him. We did tons of scrambling around tree, riding through mud, and walking up steep hills or crazy obstacles. I would say I only ended up walking the bike 1/4 of the entire time. Got to actually ride a lot. The first part of the trail was the worst. He was patient with me though. There were a few times I was trying to bail off my bike quickly, almost tangling myself up and falling, but usually I would save myself. One time I did hit a stump and got thrown forward. Another time I couldn't bail fast enough and did get tangled up and thrown to the side. No injuries from it all though, just really muddy and scrapes and bruised on the legs. John didn't see either of these incidents either so no embarrassment! Lots adrenaline when I was going down some of the crazy hills. The next day John asked me if I really did enjoy the bike ride, guess he realized I may not have enjoyed it as much as him since I had to walk the bike a lot more. But I actually did really like it. At first I was very worried as to what I was getting myself in to, but at the end, coming down the last hill, I truly loved my bike and loved the fact that I just accomplished that challenging ride! Probably will need a week or two to recover until I attempt another challenge like that though!

Man, didn't mean for this post to be so long. One more story and I am done, promise! John and I decided to go hiking yesterday. We were going to this mountain but found this other trail we wanted to explore where it went to. It was kind of cool, hiking through the forest and lots of mud. Ended up just dropping in right between these two houses in this little town of Arch Cape. I knew there was a trail to that town, but there is no sign anywhere showing how to get to the trail. Very strange. And then the trail just ends. So we went down to look at the beach. It was low tide so we wanted to go across this river to see what was on the other side of this cliff. We attempted to keep our feet dry doing this, and yeah, that didn't last long. So we just said whatever and waded through the river. Had to do a little rock climbing, which was fun. Then got to the other side and explored. John had the idea that we would be able to just go along the rocks on the coast back to where we started and then hike back up to his car. Well it was low tide, looked good to me too. We were right along the water, so no chance of making it if it was high tide! But I wasn't worried. Turned out to be tons of fun. Made our own interesting loop, had some adventure and rock climbing. It was fun! John gets so excited about things sometimes that he doesn't really take his time to compose himself and will almost trip or fall over silly little things, it cracks me up! haha, fun times!