We are Macy and Richard, mom and dad to a blended family of 5 boys, young men. Pretty soon, they will be flying the coop and our nest will be empty. Not one to let life pass us by, we decided to start planning our own adventure! So,what did we do? We bought a school bus!
The Story Behind the Skoolie
For years we’ve been talking about the things we might do when the kids moved on. Paris was a front runner after visiting there twice in one year. Spain also made the list of places we’d dreamily consider. Lately, Colorado had been jumping to the top of the list.
Then, one-weekend last month, while at my sister and brother-in-law’s house, we started talking about the ‘skoolie life’. Facebook marketplace and Craigslist became daily (maybe hourly) obsessions for us to check. We found a few buses that looked tempting, but were either too expensive or too far away to reasonably consider going to see and/or buy.
We knew we wanted a mid-size bus for a few reasons. The larger buses are often too long to be allowed into most National Parks. Also, we know that parking is going to be an issue, so we thought a bus that was a bit smaller would make those logistics slightly easier. Smaller buses hold fewer things and are therefore lighter. Lighter buses get better gas mileage, so there was that consideration too.
We’ve learned so much about buses during the past few weeks. YouTube University has been so helpful! We also joined skoolie groups on Facebook to scour the posts and comments.
A big thing we’ve learned is that buses are so much more varied than we ever knew! There are a ton of configurations, mechanical set-ups, and combinations of options. For instance…oftentimes, buses are described by how many windows they have or how many passengers they hold rather than how long the bus is! We soon found ourselves counting windows on any bus we saw on the road, exclaiming, “Oh…look at that 7 window!” or “Wow, that dognose looks like it’s in great shape!”
Speaking of dog-nose…there are and dog-nose (conventional) and flat-nose (transit). Originally, we were looking at mid-size, dog-nose buses, but then I saw a flat-nose mid-size bus and I just couldn’t get the look of those out of my mind, so we bought a school bus that ticked that box for me!
So, last weekend, after casually checking Facebook Marketplace right before bed on a Saturday night, I came across an ad for a 26′ BlueBird flat-nose in North Texas. I messaged quickly (and apparently was the first to express interest) and then the next day, we bought a bus!
Our adventure has just begun and I’m sure there will be many trials and tribulations, but we plan to document it all along the way!
Stay tuned…
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