Almost eight months of housesitting on $13/person/day.

Housesitting does not equal "free" - well, not the way we've done it, anyway. There are paid housesitting gigs all around the world, but we weren't quite sure how to find them so we opted for Housecarers.com opportunities.

You can certainly save a lot of money housesitting through sites like this but you still pay for groceries, gas, personal expenses - pretty much everything you'd normally pay for with the exception of rent. Sometimes you get lucky and the hosts have a lovely garden and/or laying chickens, which can help to offset your grocery bills. Oftentimes, hosts give you free reign over their oils and spices (and various other foodstuffs), which helps too. And one of our hosts gave us a nice gift certificate to a local market. But for the most part, you're on your own.

When we arranged our first housesit in Portland last year, we didn't actually set a maximum budget because we didn't have a clue about how long we'd be doing it post-Portland. We figured that when we ran out of travel budget money, we'd get jobs... Or something.

That said, Canada's average of $28/day seemed like a reasonable target to shoot for (mainly because we put so much effort into developing that budget three years ago and I wanted to get a little more use out of it!). So we shot for it in Portland, and then Corvallis, and then Alberta and British Columbia, and finally on Orcas Island. I think we did pretty well.

Anyway, here's the lowdown...

Initial budget: $28/day
Actual cost: 220 days at $5775 ($26/day, $13/person/day)

not my best work

• Groceries: $2059 - about $10/day for both of us, also roughly what we spent internationally whenever we had regular access to a kitchen
• Alcohol: $1142 - about the cost of a pint a day, also known as our running average when the beer is good
• Transportation: $998 - gas and car insurance
• Meals: $266 - mostly eating out in Portland, which was mostly lunches or happy hours
• Gear: $441 - minor car upgrades to hold all our crap (like the roof rack), random housesitting supplements (like a coffeemaker for Portland and used board games from thrift stores), winter clothes for Alberta and BC
• Entertainment: $508 - rainy day matinee movies, a few concerts, a few happy hours with friends, minor league hockey games in Canada
• Miscellaneous: $359 - toiletries we never know how to classify, gifts for friends, and important things like eye exams, driver's license renewals and library fines (ahem Patrick)

This is not exact. It doesn't include the transportation and lodging costs to get to our housesit gigs, our mobile phone costs, gear and groceries we purchased between housesits, and random other housesitting-related bits and pieces. (It should include these but I'd already made the pie chart when I realized this. A rough estimate of these costs would be about $1500, with mobile phones accounting for more than half of that.)

We definitely spent more (percentage-wise) on groceries, alcohol and entertainment during our housesits than during the times we stayed with family and friends between housesits, or just about any other time during our travels. Part of that was due to being in new towns and wanting to enjoy the local fare and fun; part was due to having lots of free time to try new recipes requiring random ingredients that we still have; and part of it was because housesitting really can be quite boring sometimes (at least for us - more on that in the next post).

Other fun housesitting facts...

• New dog friends made: 7

Ruby & Rusty

 

 

Danny

Jack and Willie!

 

Obi & Roxy 

• New cat friends made: 4

 

Boston

 

Felix

 

Oscar

 

Ziggy 

• Miles traveled: about 1750

 our least meandering route yet!

• Miles hiked: a shamefully low 40, mostly on Orcas Island... but we did run a lot in Portland!

We got a taste of housesitting in Melbourne and Honolulu in 2014, and a good dose of it over the last eight months. We're happy to have a break from it but we'd absolutely consider it again! Like WWOOFing, camping, and just about any other means of travel, housesitting isn't for everyone. One day soon I'm going to post a FAQ as well as some of the housesitting pros and cons from our perspective... If you have a specific question, feel free to leave a comment here and I'll try to answer it in the upcoming post!

Pacific Northwest road tripping, part two.

The general post-Orcas Island plan, Part Two, via blurry Google map:

(9 hours 27 minutes, give or take another few days)

(Previous posts about our Orcas Island->Forks stops here, and our stop in Hoh Rain Forest here. There, now you're all caught up.)

Sixth stop: Olympic National Forest and our very first campsite after we left Portland back in April 2013. We didn't camp here this time around, because anything amazing is rarely as good the second time. But talk about surreal!

day one, 2013

day one-zero-four-four, 2016

Seventh stop: Aberdeen and Kurt's memorial park. We are GenX. It had to be done.

taking our time, hurrying up

"I'm telling you for the LAST time: Courtney did it."

- Patrick

The rain started to pour shortly after the above picture was taken, so we took the opportunity for an extended lunch in Aberdeen's Denny's (because there's not much else to choose from in Aberdeen) and endured a Grand Slam planning session.

This is what we came up with... We blame the pancake puppies.

South Bend, WA's claim to fame

Just kidding. We did pass through South Bend and enjoyed this photo op (and we did eat pancake puppies - although I wouldn't say we enjoyed those, exactly). But back at the Aberdeen Denny's we had decided to high-tail it to our eighth stop, Long Beach, and see about camping in Cape Disappointment State Park.

Neither the park's name, nor the weather forecast, boded well. Our camp host pointed us to an amazing site that he thought would be perfect shelter during the rain (and sometimes wind and hail) storms that were predicted for the next few days. We paid our dues, settled in, and crossed our fingers.

camp host and site #113 for the win!

Our first evening featured clear skies and a beautiful sunset overlooking Cape Disappointment lighthouse.

un-disappointed

We weren't so lucky the next day, but that was okay - our camp host was right and all our gear stayed perfectly dry. After breakfast and a brief, slightly wet walk through peaceful Willapa National Wildlife Refuge...

( ... beautiful ... )

... the rain started again so we visited Long Beach's World Kite Museum and Hall of Fame, a small but worthwhile warehouse of cultural and historic kites.

definitely worth the $5 admission

Between rain showers, we also hit Long Beach's quirky Marsh's Free Museum and took a few ridiculous photo ops downtown.

14 other beaches around the world beg to differ

 next stop: fire

But that was enough kitsch for one day. The Lewis & Clark Museum in Cape Disappointment was closed on Mondays (disappointing!) but the surrounding trails were open, so we meandered up the cliff to the lighthouse before heading back to the campsite to hunker down for another rainy night.

the west is the best

Annnnd after our second night of rain pounding the tarp, and our sixth night of winter camping, we'd had enough. Hello, cheap motel at our ninth stop: Astoria! (A shower with towels - did I mention we forgot towels? A real bed that doesn't require inflating - did I mention we brought the small camping air mattress but forgot the pump? Wifi, walls, heat. Not having to put your shoes on to use the bathroom. Do not take these things for granted, people.)

Astoria was cold, incredibly windy, overcast, and occasionally hailing that day, plus we'd both been there many times and had already done all the mandatory Astoria things. So this time we just hit a few highlights...

we went over to Mikey's dad's place 

and we found this map 

that said that underneath this place 

there's buried treasure

40mph winds = one blurry picture of the column 

taken from the car

Ft George Brewery flight - we only liked a few,

but Blue Scorcher cafe next door was amazing

After these quick stops we went back to the hotel to enjoy the hot tub (!), watch the debate (@%&*!), and check the next day's weather. All signs pointed to rainy windy cold camping (@#$%&!!!), or another motel along the route we'd both visited dozens of times already, or just sucking it up and making a long coastal drive the next day. We opted for the long drive.

By "long drive," I mean loooooooooooooong drive...

hour one: showdown at the Peter Iredale shipwreck

hour two: mandatory photo op

hour three: mandatory squeaky cheese op

Hour four: I stopped taking pictures because it was raining too hard.

Hours five and six: extended traffic stops while workers cleaned up roadslides along Highway 101, during which we relived our favorite moments from our 2012 ExplOregon vacation.

Hour seven: "I don't care about finding Thor's Well it's raining it's cold it's dark I'm tired let's just GOOOOOOOOO." (Guess who said that?)

Hour eight: "THANK GOD, FLORENCE." (Guess who also said that?)

Hour nine, tenth stop: Eugene.

The end.

Time to clean out the car, help with some family stuff, and then head to southern Oregon for the summer. Because that's what normal people do, right - head to the hottest part of the state for the summer?

Pacific Northwest road tripping, part one.

The general post-Orcas Island plan, Part One, via blurry Google map:

(6 hours 4 minutes, give or take a few days)

First stop: Port Townsend, where we picked up minor camping supplies we'd forgotten to pack back in November. You know, like a tarp, propane, a saucepot, a knife... Totally minor things like that.

We camped at Fort Flagler Historical State Park across the bay from Port Townsend that night.

site #74 - first campsite of the year!

"Fort Flagler, along with the heavy batteries of Fort Worden and Fort Casey, once guarded the nautical entrance to Puget Sound. These posts, established in the late 1890s, became the first line of a fortification system designed to prevent a hostile fleet from reaching such targets as the Bremerton Naval Yard and the cities of Seattle, Tacoma, and Everett. Construction began in 1897 and continued in one form or another until the fort was closed in 1953." (Washington State Park web site)

one of the many battalions

It was interesting to wander around the enormous hundred-year old battalions trying to figure out how they operated back in the day. In 1000 years, this will all be ancient history, just like the Asian temples and Roman ruins we visited over the last few years... Crazy.

Fort Flagler's campground offers beachfront sites but it was cold and windy during our stay so we opted for a quiet site tucked back in the trees. We did visit the beach for a few moments...

Fort Flagler sunset

Not bad for a first stop.

Second stop: Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge near Port Angeles, featuring one of the world's longest sand spits. It was huge - five miles huge! You can walk or run the entire strip and tour the lighthouse at the end of the spit. We only had time for a quick walk, but it was a beautiful day and Mount Baker made a nice hazy backdrop for the lighthouse far, far away.

aerial shot here

After our walk we revisited Port Angeles, which was a bit surreal - that's where we caught the ferry to Victoria almost three years ago. (But that definitely wasn't the most surreal part of this little road trip, which is coming up in Part Two.)

Third stop: Neah Bay, the northwesternmost point in the continental United States. Beautiful views, a quirky campground at the beach, and dozens of bald eagles along the winding drive to and from the bay.

hiking in Cape Flattery

 life imitating life in Neah Bay

simple but functional choose-your-own campsite 
right beside the beach

nothing says "coastal Pacific Northwest" 

like a pine cone in the sand

he really does look like a muppet...

or vice versa

The best thing about most of Part One was that we'd both explored the Pacific Northwest quite a bit (individually and together) but these stops were new to us. We enjoyed them all for very different reasons.

Not true for our fourth stop, which we passed briefly through in 2013 and didn't particularly enjoy that time either. We did the ridiculous photo op... and then got the heck out of there.

 Team Buffy

From here we hit Olympic National Park's Hoh Rain Forest for a few days, then continued with Part Two of our road trip... Trying to eek out every second of our last FUNemployed days before spending eight months in one place!

Two days in Olympic National Park's Hoh Rain Forest.

"Let's take a road trip down the Pacific Northwest coastline and camp the whole way, even though it's winter and we have absolute minimum gear!"... said no sane person, ever.

We got pretty lucky with our overall post-Orcas Island road trip at the end of February, all things considered. One bummer was that due to our timing, we couldn't camp - or spend much time at all, really - in the northeastern areas of Olympic National Park.

Luckily, the park also includes stretches of beach and beautiful rain forest on the western side. Our national parks annual pass expires this month and we were determined to get one more use out of it, so we headed to Olympic's Hoh Rain Forest hoping for two rain-free nights. We got pretty lucky with that too, all things considered...

The hikes. There are three short loops near the visitor center that showcase some amazing trees. After setting up camp we meandered around the Hall of Mosses Trail and Mini-Trail-of-Informative-Signs (the Spruce Nature Trail was closed for maintenance while we were there).

 branch of mosses

trees of mosses (and teeny tiny Patrick)

The next day we headed up the Hoh River Trail to Five Mile Island. "Stunning" doesn't even begin to describe this hike. The day was pretty overcast so many of our pictures don't do it an ounce of justice... Just trust us.

I didn't do it

 one of two beautiful waterfalls

the "island" at 5 miles,

with a view of  Bogachiel Peak

 

fun for kids of all ages

serenity now

The Hoh River Trail goes on for about 18 miles and there are several backcountry campsites along the way... Also known as "our reason to go back to Hoh Rain Forest."

The campsite. After our national parks road trip last summer, we vowed to never camp in a national park again. We looked into other options but Hoh Rain Forest is pretty remote so it wasn't really practical to camp at a nearby state park. And although a younger neighbor at our Neah Bay campground had recommended several free primitive camping areas along the Hoh River, given our uncertainty about the weather and our lack of equipment on this trip (and - let's be honest here - the fact that we're getting soft in our old age), we begrudgingly opted for the Hoh campsite.

a river runs beside site #14

The site itself was perfect and we could walk right to the trails, but our string of luck with inconsiderate neighbors continued for 48 full hours. We will never camp in a national park again!

The food. It rained around dinnertime both nights and I only had a small propane stove and one tiny pot. We did the best we could under those circumstances (which meant lame food that we ate while sitting in the car).

 store-bought soup with half a bag of leftover frozen peas
and fresh tortilla garnish

... and leftover salad with cheese quesadillas

plus a little taste of home

(the rainstorm and the beer)

The summary. I'd visited this area of the park briefly several years ago. It was early summer and the short trail walks were nice, but the forest was pretty dry and the crowds were insane. This visit was completely the opposite - the trails and campsites were a little less maintained, but the lush forest moss and (general) lack of people more than made up for that. Off-season national park visits for the win!

he wanted me to stand on the short pole -

very funny, dear

One year, 19 national parks, $80... I'd say we got our money's worth. Don't forget, 2016 is the centennial anniversary of the National Park Service. Get out there and explore!