Our bus conversion “Brucie” was designed and hand built almost entirely by Asa between May 2018 and April 2019.
We then drove her 13,027 miles on an epic journey stretching from the flatwoods of the Southeast, across the great plains, down the Pacific coast, and back again through the Southwest. Along the way we visited twenty-two national parks and took a full measure of this country’s amazing public lands. Between May and November of 2019, we saw a lifetime’s worth of natural wonders, camped in some amazing places, and met many lovely and fascinating people.
We set out with grand designs of blogging our way across America, but somehow having adventures usually seemed to take priority over writing about them. Nonetheless, we did document the build and a few travel posts to our wordpress site. That wordpress site has long since been decommissioned but the posts are preserved here.
During the first good cold snap of 2018, it had become excruciatingly clear just how ineffective the minimal insulation I’d installed was at keeping a giant metal box covered in single pane windows warm. Any sort of electric heating was completely off the table due to the limited power budget. I briefly considered a propane heater or a diesel heater, but neither was a particularly compelling solution, especially since one of the design goals of the bus is to be able to operate off-grid as much as reasonably possible.
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As is becoming the norm, we’ve been so wrapped up in experiencing our travels that we’ve scarcely paused to document them. Its been an eventful few weeks since we bid Savannah farewell and took our sweaty selves northwards.
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28th May 2019 We had an early start this morning to make sure we left before the parking rules were back in play after the holiday weekend. We had the perfect place to park and stay at the Visitor Centre downtown. Usually, you would pay for parking and no RVs can park overnight however, all bets are off for Memorial Day… #winning!
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24th May 2019
Being houseless, jobless, and roaming around, you can very quickly lose track of days (very feeble excuse for my lack of blogs recently….). It was only when we tried to extend our stay at Bill Frederick park and the lady on the phone very bluntly said ‘All Full’ that I realised everyone would be heading out in their RVs and making for the same places we were trying to go.
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23rd May 2019
I FINALLY WENT TO DISNEY WORLD!!!!!
I have been wanting to go for like ages. When Asa and I started dating, I went on holiday to Spain with my friend Liv who is literally the biggest Disney fan I know (she’s been to Disney World 10 times!). We facetimed Asa and Liv asked him if he lived close to Disney World. He answered ‘Erm I’m about an 8 hour drive away!’ Probably the first time I realised fully how big one state in America is compared to our counties in England.
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19th – 22rd May 2019
I must apologise for being AWFUL at keeping this blog up to date…. I was intending on writing a post a day but it turns out, when you’re having fun you don’t want to write about it, you want to experience it! Neither of us are great at social media, if you’re following us on Instagram, you’ll see my spurts of four posts in one day and then nothing for another four days!
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18th May 2019
Today we went to the beach! De Soto National Monument is a county park with amazing sand bars and interesting sea life. After two days on the road, it was nice to be able to relax with friends.
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17th May 2019
I was awake earlier than Asa on Day 2 – this almost NEVER happens – I even tried to wait him out but nope, not going to happen. After putting the kettle on I opened the curtains to a beautiful clear and sunny morning.
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16th May 2019
It feels like this trip has been years in the making; considering Asa bought the bus last June and we’ve been planning my move since he proposed in Dec 2017, it almost has.
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It is not “normal” to convert a bus. The sensible thing to do if one is thinking about converting a bus is to go get a used RV instead. It will likely be a headache, but it probably won’t be the same kind of ordeal.
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