Shortly after I graduated from nursing school my husband and I got married. After a three day stay at a southern plantation style bed and breakfast in south Georgia, we flew to California where we were to spend the next week in Lake Tahoe. It was then that I discovered my husband is "Geographically Challenged." He booked us a flight into Los Angeles thinking it was somewhat close to Lake Tahoe. It's not. We ended up driving all day from Los Angeles to San Francisco to Sacramento then to Lake Tahoe. The trip was draining, but beautiful.
After arriving in Los Angeles we rented a car and traveled up Pacific Coast Highway toward San Francisco. The highway runs alongside the ocean (as the name would imply) for hundreds of miles; sometimes high up on cliffs overlooking the ocean and sometimes almost right at sea level. We were particularly impressed by the contrast in topography from southern California to Lake Tahoe. From sandy beaches and desert (Los Angeles) to high cliffs and hills (San Francisco) to thick forest and mountains (Lake Tahoe).
We now have a chance to revisit California as I am considering taking an assignment there as a traveling nurse. I have checked with one of my travel nursing agencies and they have made all of the areas (Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento and Lake Tahoe) very enticing. They have offered me a $1,500 bonus to relocate to any of the areas in California and to pay the cost of relocation. They have also offered to pay for our rent while we live there and to match any other agency's hourly rate. It could be a much a $55 dollars per hour. We will likely be making our decision on where to live in the next few weeks. I will let you know what we decide.