And Then Throw It Away.
Plan Ahead.
And oh, did we dream big!
A 23 year old girl and 21 year old guy walks into a school bus yard and describes to the owner that they wanted to purchase one of his 40 foot buses to turn into a house and get on the road - Oh did I love the response we got from him. I distinctly remember him staring at us for a moment, muttering something about us being new-aged hippies before walking off to go get a quote.
We didn't mind being a part of those new aged hippies.
One of our crazy ideas was planning for April of 2017 to have it done and on the road within 5 months time and be able to finish off the summer in Colorado. Another one was to budget our-spend thrifter-selves to $5000 just like we saw on other vlogs. Hah!
We actually lost track of how much we spent...
Plan after plan, we tried to keep ourselves on track, any track. Maybe just a dirt road of sorts. It got so hectic to meet our deadlines that we frequently thought about throwing this whole idea away.
Eventually, we just planned for not having a plan – and that's when the stress went away.
Plan ahead. And then plan for it to not go according to plan.
It's okay. Be a little messy.
S e e w h e r e i t s t a r t e d
Fresh off the market!
Craiglist. Letgo. Offer up. Car lots. Schoolbus yards.
We looked everywhere. This is when knowing the spec's of what you're looking for is SUCH a huge time saver - and with someone who had that mechanical mind, we saved it by the bus loads.
Bear is a 1998 GMC Chevrolet 3500 van that was converted into a school bus by a Canadian company and was shipped back to the states. It was then used as a church bus for some time before being sold yet again.
We found her on Facebook Marketplace selling for $2600 from a kid that had similar dreams to our own but never took off the ground. At the time, we lived in NYC and Bear was parked fairly deep in Long Island
An almost 2 hour train trip and Uber ride later, we met up with her owner and lo 'n behold! She looked a little rough around the edges but we imagined a completely different image of her. The only major issue that she had was her glow plug system had to be completely reconstructed. With a little fuel in the system, a run to the DMV and some hassle of paperwork later, Bear was back home with us.
Click on the images to make it larger!
She made it home!
Now What?
We. Got. Busy!
Modena, NY. - April 2017
The bus' new home was located upstate New York in a little town named Modena. Finding a location to store the bus was one of the first challenges to this journey but lucky we had friends of the family that owned land large enough for us to get started.
Everything started to change
Suddenly, our life went from work, home, school, rinse & repeat to pushing everything we had into this new lifestyle.
Every weekend was spent at the bus no matter what the weather threw at us, and every week was spent budgeting what we made to make this work!
BusLife
For a few months during the winter we decided to do a test run of living in the bus full time. We have to admit - it made us appreciate basic necessities ten times more!
Little things like heat, water, electricity became a hassle. We never thought about it when living back in NYC but now...
Heat meant us going to go chop, stack, and store wood, or living with propane pumping right next to you. Electricity meant going outside to start a generator in the snow. Water meant carrying two 5 gallon jugs back and forth to fill the tanks. The Natures Head toilet needed to be emptied every week or two. This kind of living meant getting out of our comfort zone and putting in the work to get the comfort that was always there living in a city.
–
For the millennials in the back, it meant work.
Here's where the road journey
Begins.
We left Modena NY in early November of 2019. Our first stop? To spend Thanksgiving with family in West Virgina.
We're just getting started.
The build didn't end when we got on the road. For us, it seemed like something could always be improved! This was going to be our "escape society" vehicle after all. So while we drove from state to state we ended up re-doing the bed design (twice...okay, okay. four times), adding dry bags to the outside of the bus, ripping up the bathroom floor and putting down new tiles, re-purposing the back of the kitchen counter, adding tons of new storage space, giving Atlas a new clubhouse!
Both of us came with a few skills on hand when starting this project, but never did we imagine us becoming plumbers, electricians, carpenters, and designers because of this - It just happened. Youtube, Pinterest, and D.I.Y guides are the driving force behind it all - and our biggest aides.
Who says you need formal trade schooling to be a tradesman/woman?
But then we had to move on...
Wander Bear was the start of something so much bigger for us. It showed us what freedom could be like. It pushed our boundaries of how we imagined living and traveling. It will continue to live on through us in every adventure we take on. However, we had to sell our baby in May of 2020 so that we could begin our careers.
It was our first big project, but it won't be the last.
Final Selling Photos
