Day 157 –
I’m still counting the days, because we’ve still living in the bus. Even if it’s parked in the side yard of our house. Marty is already back at work – his beloved brewery took him right back and loaded him up with hours. It’s weird that we aren’t together 24/7. It’s also weird being home – knowing where the best thai food is, the best bottle shop, the library that actually lends us books, etc. Day 178 – Kids are off on their first day of school. It’s supposed to be magic. For the first time EVA – a bus will pick them up from our home. They will eat lunch at school, and then return on that magical orange bus. This is going to be ok, right? I miss them so much already. It’s been ten minutes. Day 192 – We brought the bus to the shop. We’ve had some concerns…I mean, the bus basically had a heart attack in New Mexico. But, imagine that you’re 40 years old, running up hills, in New Mexico; you might have a heart attack too! Anyway, we’re dropping it off for a while. Day 222 – Just picked the bus up. Yes – it was in the shop for a full month! The estimate for all the work it needs was FOURTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS! No – it didn’t get all the work done that it needed! We had the amazing technician address the things that might kill us, in order, until our budget was spent. The rest will have to wait. Day 248 – We know when we can leave. When we came back, we knew we’d be here until December – maybe May. Now we know that we can* leave in December. If we want to. Well, we do…but it’s not that easy. We came back and enrolled the kids in school. So, if we leave again, we have to pull them out, again. We put off some doctor appointments and whatnot, so now we have to catch up. We still haven’t sold our house….so let’s do that. It’s bewildering how quickly we find ourselves entangled in commitments. We ran – long and hard and fast- from this life we had built, but then came right back to it. And we’re in danger of getting stuck again.
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I'm sitting in my bed, inside my vintage, self-converted bus. It's been 66 days since we packed up the kids and the pets, and drove away from our house. We left North Carolina on March 1. Today, I'm in a National Forest in Texas and reflecting on our journey. Here are some stats:
Days 1-60:
It's interesting to see that we camped for free 49% of the time. I think this is awesome, both because we are newbies at this, and because I've heard that free camping is harder on the east coast! So YAY! Half our nights were free! It's also interesting to see that nights paid doesn't equal nights hooked up. That's because, sometimes, we had to pay to camp in a location, even if we didn't use electricity. Two locations come to mind - one in SC and one in LA - and both were AMAZING! I would totally pay to be there again! I can't imagine not having solar panels. They are a GAME CHANGER! Really! We were off grid for 40 out of the 60 days, a whopping 66% of the time. Having a solar setup has opened up so many opportunities for us. I highly, highly, recommend solar. It's magical! Let's discuss the camping fees. $669 in two months works out to be about $335 a month. This would be a pretty awesome price for rent and utilities! But really, I don't think that's the whole story. To truly understand what it costs to live this kind of a lifestyle, we would definitely need to factor in the gas. Our bus gets, like, 5 miles to the gallon. So while I did spend a ton at the pump when I was commuting to work everyday, I suspect that we may be paying more now to move this diesel monster from point to point. But that's a post for another day :) We started this adventure January 25th 2018 with the purchase of DasBus. Now one year later we are ready to begin the real adventure. I gutted the bus starting in February 2018 and finished total build in August. |
stancil 6Family of 6 traveling the country full time. Archives
November 2019
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