Life of the Traveling Wife

Our Story

Hey, friend! Thanks for checking out this website. I’m so happy you are here! For those that don’t know who we are, my name is Maddy and my husband’s name is Bobby. I am from Long Island, NY and Bobby is from the greater Pittsburgh region of PA. We met during college in September 2014 at the base of Sharp Top Mountain in Virginia, a trail known by many that went to our college because of its incredible views of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The day we met we hiked up to the top of Sharp Top and back down together with our group of mutual friends, had lunch, went kayaking at a lake near our campus, and ended the night all together stargazing at the observatory on our campus. It sounds like a story that John Green or Nicholas Sparks would have taken a while to write, but it was real life and a foreshadowing of the many adventures to come throughout our relationship. Fast forward to April 2018 we got engaged across the way from Sharp Top at Abbott Lake. And a year after that we married on May 26, 2019 in Scottdale, PA. We moved to Pittsburgh after our wedding and honeymoon in Nashville, TN because Bobby became a Registered Nurse and accepted a job at their Children’s Hospital in the ER. While we lived in Pittsburgh I worked at a Christian private school in their main office doing a bit of everything from day to day operations, handling post-fundraising mailings and database, assisting administration to substituting and teaching the Home Ec class how to sew!

Our Transition to Travel Nursing

We really enjoyed our time in Pittsburgh, but knew that we really wanted to travel for extended periods of time to start our search for where we would want to plant roots in the future (also hopefully to escape the brutally bitter north eastern winters we both have endured our whole lives).  Summer & Fall 2021, we began to really contemplate the idea of Bobby switching to travel nursing. More and more the thought of us moving to Florida came to our minds. Bobby had been working in pediatrics for over two years and wanted experience working in an adult ER before we made the decision to pack up our three bedroom home, store everything, leave our jobs, and commit to travel nursing full time. So, he quit his job and accepted another job at an adult ER in Pittsburgh. During this time we had been praying for direction and wisdom while facing adversity in the healthcare world. We asked God to open the doors that he would want us to walk through and to shut and keep shut the doors that were not meant for us. On December 1, 2021 I told my job that my last day would be January 14, 2022. Then at the beginning of January Bobby put his two weeks notice into the adult hospital he spent a few months gaining experience in. In the meantime, Bobby applied for and was issued a Florida nursing license. He created profiles with several travel agencies and was applying to open emergency room positions in hospitals in Florida. He had been offered one position but we turned it down due to the fact that housing was really hard to find in that area because it was not near a more predominant city. It was definitely nerve wracking to turn down an offer because it was the first we had heard from and we had waited a few weeks to get any offer. But an hour or two later after turning down our first offer we received another call that made us do the happy dance right there in our kitchen. It was a travel agency that extended an offer to us for a hospital in Tampa, Florida, which was one of the two cities we really hoped to start out our adventure in!

Our Big Move

Before we had gotten any offers, we started to get the ball rolling on our packing. We started renting a storage unit we liked the location and price of and began moving boxes and smaller household objects by the car loads. We also rented a small 4 by 8 foot Uhaul trailer that attached to the hitch of my car to try to get as much as we could out before we rented a box truck to get the bigger bulkier furniture out. We wanted to be as ready and prepared as we could be in case we were to get an offer. After accepting the position in Tampa- it was go time. We packed. And packed. Filled out an abundance of paperwork. Found a great fully furnished apartment in Tampa. And packed some more. Then graciously enough two of our friends from our small group came to help load up the Uhaul box truck on moving day. And as Pittsburgh would have it, our going away present was a blizzard that accumulated more snow than three hours should precipitate. Our friends were real troopers that morning! We drove to our storage unit and Bobby’s parents came to help us unload. After our house was emptied and deep cleaned, we stayed a few days at Bobby’s parent’s house while they were on vacation. Then we departed the greater Pittsburgh region on February 24, 2022 with only the things that could fit in our two cars that would last us the duration of this first 13 week assignment. We drove from Pittsburgh to Charlotte, NC. We met up with some friends for dinner and Bobby and I stayed in an AirBnb. The next day we drove from Charlotte to Tampa. In those two days, we drove over 900 miles. Our first night in Tampa we stayed in a hotel and then moved into our first fully furnished apartment we are living in the following day.

What To Expect

Now that we are mostly caught up with each other, I wanted to let you know what you can be expecting from this blog! I wanted to have a space where I could document the things that are going on in our life to share with our family and friends and to help nurses who are thinking about traveling now or in the future! You can look forward to future blogs where I’ll share in greater detail what travel nursing entails, some of the do’s and don’ts for those thinking about travel nursing, and what our first hand experience has been like! I’ll keep you informed of our where-a-bouts and share the highs and lows along the way. If our new and developing story can help encourage or inspire you to do or try something new, then you can count on us to not hold back!

Let’s Get Connected

I would appreciate it if you would subscribe to this blog! It’ll be the best way for me to share with you the details of our journey. AND I would love to hear from you!! Leave a comment. Have questions? Send them to me and I will do my best to incorporate the answer to all your questions in future blog posts! Do you know someone who is looking into travel nursing soon or in the future? Share this blog with them! I am so grateful to be able to share this bright new adventure with you! Signing out from the Sunshine State. 🌞🌴

Madison Basile

Long Island, NY> Lynchburg, VA> Pittsburgh, PA> Tampa, FL 🏡