The lead up to Escaping.

Hello all!

We have successfully made it 2 weeks living in our 2021 KZ 195bhk travel trailer. We've traveled a lot so far. Here is the path we have taken up to this point: Boise Idaho, to White Salmon Washington, to Portland Oregon, to Eugene Oregon (to see my sister and brother-in-law - awesome visit!), to Klamath California (visiting the Redwood National Forest - big ass trees), to Eureka California, to Fort Bragg Calfornia (sketchy highway 1), to Guerneville California (awesome little hippy town), to Petaluma California, to Coalinga California, to Barstow California, to Lake Mead State Park in Las Vegas, to Zion National Park in Utah, Kanab Utah for a night stay, then off to Flagstaff and Grand Canyon.

To start, leaving Boise was really, really difficult. I've owned Trailhead Sports Clinic for 10 years now and Myofly Therapeutic Massage for 5 years. The complexity to transition management and the doctors to take my place, was like recreating an entirely new business. I had to continue patient care while recruiting staff and training them to take over for me. Yeehaw! Finding trustworthy people to run my business that I have devoted a decade to building, was very difficult. I successfully found an awesome front office person, Jackie Navarro, who had a long history working for another chiropractic group in Boise. She is the brightest person I've met in a long time. I trust her entirely.

Leading up to finding Jackie, I got my first mentor, Dr. Rick Tweedt, to come back to practice. He and I were in contact for a while prior to him coming back for about 8 months. I was so elated to bring him on as an associate doctor of my clinic. It is a true honor to have Dr. Tweedt practicing in our clinic. If you don't know him, he's been in practice for over 28 years in Boise and has treated some of the best professional athletes our State has produced. He's a badass and I love that he's with us.

When Henry (our Son) entered our life, I almost instantly decided I needed to exit the day-to-day work at my clinic and transition into a clinical director/owner role. It wasn't but a few days later that I put an ad on my University's switchboard looking for a doctor that had very specific techniques and an identical philosophy of care. About a week later Dr. Jim Thornburg wrote me an email saying he felt very connected to what I had posted on the switchboard and that he was very interested in the position. I read his resume and decided he had it all.

We worked out a plan to get him to Idaho by January 4th, for the start of the New Year. Fast forward a full quarter and all my patients are super happy with his care and he's grown the business. He's the type of guy that creates a strong team and a fun work environment. Dr. Jim is a solid dude and an elite level sports doctor. I am very excited to have him as a business partner and friend.

Lastly, we found Ava Cooper. Ava is the clinical assistant to Dr. Tweedt and Dr. Thornburg. She helps them stay current on their chart notes and she helps with the patient experience by assisting them clinically. Ava is a keeper! She's an Athletic Training student at Boise State University. We're lucky to have her!

In addition to getting the clinic prepped for transition, I was also learning to be a new dad, as well as, get our AirBnB set up with a new property manager. As I said in the intro/bio, I spent the majority of 2020, during the pandemic, building our property into a vacation rental home. The majority of the big projects were completed, so the leftover stuff was to get it listed on all the travel sites and push play. All this had to happen by March of 2021 and I didn't really start working on it until Jim got to Boise.

All this became too intense to deal with so I decided to reach out to Kate Swift, owner of Property Works LLC. She has over 50 properties she manages and the expertise to run our property thoroughly. She and her team went through our home and property and did an awesome makeover. New furniture, gentle touches here and there and a thorough deep clean. They did a great job and the place has started to get booked. If it goes as planned, our home will be a significant source of our annual income personally. Finger's crossed! Knowing Kate and her team, I know it'll crush it.

To end this post, getting to the point of leaving Idaho was a massive undertaking. It can be done! If you want to do it, just do it. How we did it may differ from how you will do it, but I will say these three things are crucial: 1. Continue making money in several different ways. 2. Downsize your life prior to leaving (i.e., literally, 5-7 changes of clothes, a couple hats, 2-3 pair of shoes, 1 multi-use cup (I use a 20 oz Yeti mug), 1 fork, 1 spoon, 1 knife etc., Ninja Air Fryer, Instant Pot, cast iron pan, Cabela's coffee percolator, and a few other things). 3. Buy a new Chevy Colorado ZR2 and a new KZ 191bhk Escape travel trailer (i.e., new is more comfortable and efficient than old).

Thanks for reading and I'll be sure to write in this blog as much as I can. Next time I'll go through some of the challenges we've faced on the road and some more cool adventures we've experienced.  Here are a few pictures of the places we've seen so far.  

Have a great Saturday!

Nate

#influencers #campinglife #instantpot #ninjaairfryer #chevycolorado #kzescape #travel #yeti