When shelter in places orders swept the country we were thankful that we were in an “essential” industry and accepted that we wouldn’t be going anywhere for the next year or so. If you had told us that we would be moving in the middle of the summer during a spike in COVID cases to the desert? No way.

At the beginning of June, Kirk received a job offer in Phoenix. The job was in the industry he was passionate about and would utilize his educational background so there was little question of accepting. His first day was at the end of June and we wanted to have a bit of time to get settled so we quickly found an apartment and started pulling items for donation. Since we had been working from home since March Kaila was able to stay with her current job.

Kaila’s parents were nice enough to come help us with packing and moving day. So instead of leaving on Saturday and making the drive in two days we left Friday and stayed over in Oklahoma City before continuing to Albuquerque and then down to Phoenix. Arizona was hit with a series of wildfires the weekend that we drove down so we ended up in weekend traffic between Flagstaff and Phoenix. We were trying to get to Phoenix by 5 to pick up keys to our apartment so we were a little anxious. Fortunately we made it to the office just as the staff was leaving and were able to sleep on the floor of our new apartment that night!

We’ve been out here for about a month now and are enjoying it immensely. As you all know from our previous posts we live a pretty outdoor-centric life; so moving to a place where there are more opportunities to go hiking, camping, kayaking, or general exploring every weekend is a dream. Case in point: we’ve gone hiking every weekend since moving in (even in the heat of the summer)! Look for a post soon about some of our hiking trips.