Skoolie Overland Travel Part 1: Why a Skoolie-Conversion Makes a Bad Travel Rig

I need to clear this up before we get to the good stuff: My wife and I live in a school bus conversion, by choice. We love the freedom and simplicity that comes from a life with 78 square-feet of living space and having the whole world as our playground. That being said, there are aspects of skooliedom that we did not expect. We met several travelers on the road that shared some of these sentiments about their school buses too, so we knew we were not alone. There is a companion article to this one about why skoolies are great for travel, in case this one drags you down too much.

Check it out here: Skoolie Overland Travel Part 2: Why a Skoolie-Conversion Makes a Great Travel Rig

 

First, Skoolies are BIG! Even if you purchase the smallest modern school bus (which we did) it is still 20-22 feet long, 8 feet wide, and over 9 feet tall. After we gutted the interior, built out a home inside, and filled up our water and fuel tanks, our bus weighs just under 10,000 pounds! The size of these metal behemoths makes them difficult to navigate down narrow 4-wheel-drive trails and some forest service roads. The height and width can also make traveling through some tunnels equally as difficult. The tunnel entering Zion National Park from the East was going to charge us $20 to pass through their tunnel, luckily, we had time to spare and drove around the southern end of the park to enjoy Pink Sand Dunes State Park instead.

Imagine wanting to take that iconic Instagram shot on the beach with your skoolie looking all accomplished on the sand? Think again. Unless you have 4-wheel-drive (pretty rare), reliable recovery gear, and some know-how, you are going to get stuck. Expect to need a fairly large truck or tractor to pull your 10,000+ pound butt out of the sand.

Some skoolies can reach Class-A RV size and at that point, forget about leaving the pavement, passing through most tunnels, and parking in any parking lot other than a Wal-Mart.

 

Skoolies are SLOW!

While we are on the topic of driving slowly, expect to drive slowly…very slowly. Unless you commit significant amounts of money to increase your busses horsepower and torque, your bus will probably be underpowered. Expect to travel at speeds much slower than traffic around you and commit a lot of time to making the extremely coveted left turn or to pass a Volkswagen van travelling slower than even you are traveling.

If you read Part 2 of this post, you will see that this point also shows up as a positive of traveling via school bus conversion. Hop on over to that article to find out why.

 

Skoolies are built to haul kids around cities, not haul your stuff through mountain trails.

Think back to when you were a child and you rode the bus to school, if you were one of those important kids whose mothers coddled you, just imagine with me. You are engaged in conversation or a game of M.A.S.H (don’t lie, you know you did) and all of a sudden you hear a noise and a split second later you are catapulted several feet in the air and you are quickly joined by everyone else on the bus, except the driver, she has a seatbelt.

I can remember riding the bus back from high school basketball games as a student and after exhausting myself on the court, seeking refuge in the plush pleather seats of the school bus and drifting into a restful nap just in time for the bus to catch a small pothole and lift me several inches in the air and drop my face back on the seat with exceptional force. Riding in the passenger area of a school bus is not pleasant.

Now imagine that most of your belongings, your computer and camera, maybe even your dog is somewhere in the rear of your Skoolie conversion and you are driving through San Diego on your way to the Sierras. You hit an unavoidable pothole and now your belongings, passengers, and tastefully hand-crafted cabinet doors are at the mercy of your top-heavy, overweight school bus.

Some modern-day school buses now come equipped with air-ride suspension, air brakes, and sometimes even seatbelts for children. Ours, however, didn’t even come with a rear sway bar. Therefore, we roll over obstacles with the front wheel fine and feel the wrath of the rear axle as the bus topples side to side. Cornering with no rear sway bar is interesting as well as the risk of roll-over is greatly increased. We solve these problems by traveling very slowly, even through traffic. Yes, we could add a sway bar, and probably will. But, the added cost associated with making a Skoolie road-worthy pushes the budget too far. With a couple more thousand-dollar upgrades, we could have afforded a full-size truck with a slide-in camper and been able to travel much farther and as comfortably as we could in a Skoolie, for the same price.

 

You see a juicy snack, vehicle dwellers see a sharp or blunt object poised to attack.

If there isn’t a secure home for every item in your bus, it becomes a projectile.

This is more of a common issue with living in a vehicle in general, but when we first laid out our plans for the interior of the bus we never knew that we would need and want so many cubbies, shelves, drawers, and hiding places for the miscellaneous junk that finds its way onto the bed every couple of days.

Who knew that sitting 4 or 5 Nalgenes under the kitchen table and driving down a twisting mountain road would cause a ruckus like you have never heard as the bottle tip, tumble, and fly around the cozy passenger compartment?

Since moving into our bus full-time we have added shelves, baskets, nets, and a bunch of other containment solutions to keep our at-hand items from hitting us in the head on the freeway. When you see the #vanlifer on the grams with pictures hanging on the wall and glass mason jars on the counter with fresh flowers in them, understand that the scene before you is carefully crafted and in the event that the Skoolie in question is actually driven, those items are stowed somewhere or they are stowed everywhere.



When something breaks (and it will break), Skoolie parts are not easy to come by, especially on the road. We will use our bus as an example. Our bus is technically a 2000 Chevrolet 139 Cutaway with a 6.5L Turbo-charged diesel engine. This means we share a motor with a lot of different Chevy trucks, busses, vans, and even a few military and civilian HMMVV’s, and not much else.

So, when we need an air filter, we can just order one for the 6.5L and be done with it. Easy, peasy. However, when we need to buy a trailer hitch in Concrete, WA because ours is bending and dangling our precious bikes and new bike rack within inches of the asphalt, which vehicle model do we use? If we use the 2000 Chevy Express Van, which works with other parts, we will soon find out that the frame widths and construction were completely different between the two models and that our bus more closely resembles a full-size, heavy duty Chevy Pickup truck. The only challenge now is to find the model of Silverado with the same frame width as the bus, then order that model online, ship it general delivery to Concrete, WA, and install it in the post office parking lot with a cordless drill and hand tools.

Homework assignment: Go to your nearest parts store, tell the chap behind the counter that you need a driver’s door handle for a 2000 Chevy 139 Cutaway. Wait patiently, you will be there for a while.

 

Shade Tree Mechanic in Oregon

Lastly, when you break down and the repair is above your skill level, finding a mechanic to work on a Skoolie is not easy. For some reason, a lot of shops that we have spoken with won’t even touch our rig because it is an 8-lug chassis and therefore bigger than they want to mess with or bigger than they are capable of messing with.

In Oakhurst, CA we needed a simple brake job done and didn’t feel comfortable replacing pads and shoes on a dirt forest service road. We contacted 6 shops and not a single one would even consider looking at our brakes. One even went as far as to tell us that the only way they would work on it is if they replaced the rotors too, at $215 a piece. We finally found a shop that had a cancellation and would fit us in, but it wasn’t cheap.

 

If you are still hanging on through all of that negative, I hope you have had the chances to read Part 2 of this article, Skoolie Overland Travel Part 2: Why a Skoolie-Conversion Makes a Great Travel Rig. We are really happy with our choice to hit the road in our Skoolie and we wouldn’t trade the experience for anything.

If you have enjoyed our article, please explore the blog some more as there are tons of stories, write-ups, and photos from our travels around the country. If you want a more streamlined media feed, check out our Instagram and Facebook pages, thanks for stopping by!

 

The Dirty Side of #vanlife: 4 Ways to Stay Fresh & Clean While Living on the Road

If your social media feeds are like mine, they are littered with #vanlifers that are sprawled out in their sprinter conversions, physically exquisite companion half naked lying next to them and they all have the same thing wrong with them: they are clean!

When we travel, we like to stay active. It helps to break up the long periods of driving or flying with as rigorous an activity as we can manage. With these rigorous activities, one develops a type of musk that tends to only be noticeable to everyone else but you. Some people have varying levels of stank when they are outdoors and others just go straight to “Level 4: Do not, under any circumstances lift your arms or open your legs” type of stank.

Fear not, we have a few solutions that we think might be helpful to you if you are approaching a dangerous level of outdoorsy musk. Most of these methods have been tested by the two of us at some point in our travels and we have first hand experience with them. Others, like the bear canister washing machine, we have not tried yet. But for the sake of science, we will probably give it a go when we have the chance.

Take a Shower- This one seems obvious, but some people really need this tip. Yes, your hippy dreads look much better when your hair hasn’t seen shampoo in weeks. But your B-O is still a problem and those of us trying to steal the same coffee shop WiFi as you, don’t want to smell you.

Our skoolie is equipped with a “bag” style solar shower much like this one:


We have used this shower all summer and it has worked really well. It’s as simple as filling the bag with water from the tap or the nearby stream and sitting the bag in the sun, black side up. That’s it! Now just wait for the water inside to reach an acceptable level of hot and voila! You have a warm shower!

BUSLIFE TIP: Shop around  for a pop-up tent shelter. You can bathe in privacy, even in the middle of the Utah desert!

If you are parking in town or in an area where you can’t setup your shower, consider a gym or public pool. This summer, while passing through Omak, Washington, we stopped at their pool because an all-day pool admission with showers cost us $3/each. We got to beat the 100+ degree temps and take a proper shower!

 

Wash Your Clothes- This one should be a no-brainer too, but it must be said. If your clothes stink, you stink. We have utilized the small area at the foot of our bed as a his and hers laundry hamper. This way, after Rachael wears the same sports bra three days in a row, we don’t have to smell it as much as if it were just piled in the corner.

Laundromats are everywhere! Most campgrounds have laundry washing machines that are coin operated just like a laundromat. For Christmas this year, Rachael’s sister gave us a mason jar full of quarters for potential laundry stops. Rebecca, we are eternally grateful. On days that the temperature is unbearable or we need to catch up on blog posts or computer work, we will start some laundry and enjoy AC and WiFi.

Laundromat/Coffee Shop in Jasper, AB

 

Clean Your Rig- Each week there are areas that need to be cleaned and picked up just like living in a brick and mortar home. Tasks like keeping the food organized, sweeping, taking the garbage out, and keeping clothes where they belong. Similarly, every month there are other items like cleaning the solar panels, topping off batteries, and checking the fluids that are vital to staying efficient in our travels.

If your skoolie/van/truck camper/car smells, you will smell. What this means when building your vehicle is to make sure and vacuum, bleach, and wipe down every nook and cranny that you can. Traveling in a 1984 camper van? Make sure the shag carpet doesn’t smell like 1984.

 

Maintain Clean Gear

The last area that we notice the most stench is with our gear. The smells that are generated from two humans riding bicycles through gravel and mud for 50 miles are impressive. It is important to wash or clean your gear as soon as you can. Obviously if you just got out of The Grand Canyon on a 5-day backpacking trip (SPOILER: you will stink!) your gear is going to smell bad. However, use a rest day to recharge and wipe down your gear with either soap and water or a lot of Clorox wipes.

BUSLIFE TIP: Check with the manufacturer of your clothing or gear before using harsh cleaners or even some high-DEET bug sprays. Certain chemicals can stain or damage waterproofing on some gear. 

We avoid a lot of smells by keeping our shoes in a separate “cubby” area, keeping our hydration packs and backpacks in the under-bed storage area and washing our clothes every 3 weeks or so ;).

How do you stay clean on the road? What glaring tips have we missed? We would love to hear about your tips and tricks for staying clean and fresh while living a nomadic lifestyle! E-mail us at okienomads@gmail.com.

 

 

 

SaveSave

SaveSave

How We Quit Our Jobs to Travel the Country Full Time

Updated February 2019

We orignially posted this while traveling full-time and living 99% off of savings. Some things have changed and we have updated this post with the changes. New information after nearly a year of travel will be in italics.


We did it! We quit our desk jobs and took off across the country in our converted school bus. A nomadic lifestyle has proven to be tricky and challenging in all sorts of ways and we have tried to document how we made the switch from full-time, white picket fence, 9-5’ers to full-time, skoolie living, nomads!

A Little Background

Rachael worked with the local university in the business office taking care of students that needed financial guidance to remain enrolled and in good standing with the university. She really thrives in an environment where she can help people every day and use her exceptional customer service skills.

I worked in a similar field, managing the accounting and compliance for a job training center that works with at risk youth. I never particularly cared for the work, but getting to interact with young people and trying to make a difference in their lives was meaningful enough to stay there for 4 years.

However, as of March 15th, 2018 we were unemployed and shortly thereafter, became houseless. See, a big component of this plan was to make sure that we could liquidate the assets or liabilities that were holding us in one place and the biggest asset that we owned as a couple was our home. I purchased a house several years ago and had always planned on upgrading it and flipping it or turning it into a rental property. Fast forward to now and the house is rented to a lovely couple and the rent amount more than covers the mortgage and repairs.

So how have we transitioned from a house full of stuff and a driveway full of cars and projects, to a couple that can fit most everything that they own in a short bus and a shed? How we did it is outlined below:

Sell Everything

START WITH THE SMALL STUFF

This is dramatic and over-simplified, but seriously, sell everything. We found so much stuff that we don’t use and that doesn’t bring us any kind of joy. Did  I really need six (yes, 6) fishing poles? I fished once in 2017. I sold all but two rods and they will be going in the bus with us. We had several garage sales and facebook posts that sold everything from duplicate things that we both had when we got married to things that simply sat on a shelf and never got used. Start analyzing what clothes you enjoy wearing and which clothes sit in your closet and never get worn. Start making a pile of clothes you don’t want and put them up for sale. SMALL STUFF– ~$2000

MAKE A PLAN TO SELL THE BIG STUFF

After you have sold a lot of the little things that you don’t enjoy, move on the big stuff. In 2015, I purchased a two year old Honda Accord that was cleaner, faster, and nicer than anything I had ever owned. I loved that car. I loved the efficiency and status that came with having a nice car. However, I quickly realized that the price tag was not worth the comfort. We sold the car and Rachael’s pickup truck and are now a one vehicle family, a bus! Not having a car payment and having dirt cheap insurance is one of the most freeing feelings that I have ever felt.

Another big ticket item that needed to go was my project 4×4. This was the first car that I purchased outright after completing college and there was a ton of sentimental value attached to it. It had been on many adventures and hauled most of the gear that I owned to the trailhead or the riverside. It had issues however, and cost several thousand dollars to get it running after the head gasket blew a couple of years back. Once repaired, we sold it and cut our losses. Keep in mind that you will rarely make back the amount of money invested in a project car.

ACCORD SAVINGS- $385/mo

4X4- $3750

Make a Budget and Stick to It

One of the most difficult things for us to do is to stick to a budget and most of that revolves around food and fuel. We have opted to maintain a simple budget and track our expenses as we travel. We encourage anyone trying to live this lifestyle to keep detailed records and copies of receipts for potential tax purposes. Below is the outline of our weekly budget:

Food 125
Gas 125
Gear 20
Supplies 20
Laundry 10
Fun 50
Misc 50
Weekly Total 400
Monthly 1600

As expected, we have overshot our fuel budget significantly while traveling through California and Oregon. We have seen diesel prices exceed $5.00/gal. Below is a more accurate budget breakdown for our travels after four months on the road:

Food 150
Gas 175
Gear 10
Repairs 50
Laundry 5
Fun 25
Misc 25
Weekly

 

Total

440
Monthly 1760

 

COUNT ON NEEDING A FEW REPAIRS

Our bus is a 2000 Chevy that had 107,000 miles on it when we started the build process, which would lead one to expect a relatively trouble free 20,000 miles or so traveling around the country. Well in four months we have had to replace the brake pads on the front and rear as well as the rear axle oil seal ($700), replaced the Pump Manual Drive ($300), and replaced a broken bike rack ($500) and a bent DIY trailer hitch ($250). 

Since then, we have spent another couple of hundred dollars on miscellaneous parts such as fuel filters, fuel pump, and a serpentine belt. All are regular maintenance items that would come up during the regular course of ownership.

If you are planning to travel the country and rack up hard miles on your school bus or van, consider having a pot set aside for repairs and new parts. It helps to be able to replace parts and do some of the work yourself, but count on having to pay a shop to do more of the heavy duty jobs.

 

LIVE YOUR CONVERSION BUDGET BEFORE YOU MOVE IN

If you are still working on your bus, start using your “full-time” budget as soon as possible even if you are living in the driveway. Accustom yourself to not getting the $5 cup of coffee and start conditioning yourself to ride your bike to work when your weekly fuel budget is spent.

We have continued to use this philosophy as we find housesitting gigs around North America. We use the time to recharge, save some more money, and see a new area more intimately. Likewise, we still live like we are in the bus even though we are in a big house in a beautiful location. This keeps costs relatively stable and sometimes it’s much cheaper.

SAVE, SAVE, SAVE

The only way that a full-time nomadic lifestyle was possible for us was through savings. We began early in our relationship with a fair amount saved up already and once we were married we were able to reduce our expenses and save a lot of our expendable cash for travel.

SAVE FOR THE “END GAME”

What happens when you run out of money? What if your freelance gigs dry up? What do you do if your company doesn’t want to pay you to work remotely any more? Be smart and have a pot of money sitting aside, ideally in a fluid investment (think high-yield savings account), and be prepared to settle down somewhere for a while until you have enough money saved up to have another go at it. At minimum you will need some money to park your rig and job hunt in a new area. Don’t be caught off-guard by not being prepared.

PLAN FOR FUTURE TRAVEL

Where do you want to go on your next adventure? Knowing where you are going will make plans much easier while you travel. For example, we want to eventually travel the Baja Peninsula, so we are making plans to brush up on our Spanish and reach out to businesses that hire ex-pats in the Baja area for work over the winter. Most organizations and businesses don’t look for last minute employees. Reach out and make connections before they are needed.

If you are making income while traveling, consider setting aside $25-$50/month to your “Baja Fund” and keep it separate from your other savings. This will allow you to save toward a goal and have a good chunk of cash to start from when you are ready to make the jump again.

Live Simply

The longer you spend working on this lifestyle, the quicker you will learn what you need or don’t need in a given week. For example, we have found that we can wear a shirt a few times before it starts to smell (and that’s why we do laundry right?). We have also found that if we aren’t working up a sweat, we can skip a shower for a couple of days. Our camp shower gets used regularly for “rinse offs”.

One of the most obvious ways that we have embraced the “bus life” is through using objects for more than one purpose. Recently we bought a huge tray of strawberries at the market and after we were finished, turned the container into a box for our granola bars in the cabinet. For more ideas on reducing your environmental impact while living a nomadic life or a normal 9-5 life, check out our article HERE!

5 STEPS TO SAVE THE PLANET EVERY DAY

Pick Up a Side Hustle

While we traveled the U.S. in 2018, we tried to pick up odd-jobs along the way that could supplement our budget a bit and allow us to experience new things. From working as parking attendants for a massive music festival to shooting residential drone footage in Idaho, there are options out there to make a little side money to keep going. 

A lot of folks that we have met on the road have a side hustle like selling essential oils or making handcrafted goods that they sell online. Other folks that we have met maintain real jobs from their vehicles. One of our friends works for a non-profit full-time from his sprinter conversion which allows his wife to pursue her dreams of becoming a nutrition expert.

In September, we reached out to a group that we had volunteered with earlier in the year about volunteering with them again. When we chatted with them, we were suprised that they offered us part time jobs working remotely. We are able to set our own hours within reason, collaborate with people on our team all across the U.S. and save up for more travel. Can you say Alaska 2020?


Are you living life on the road as a nomad? If so, how did you do it? We would love to hear from anyone that has found other ways to make it on the road and avoid the 9-5 at all costs!

As always, thank you for reading along on our travels and adventures. Hopefully you were entertained, enlightened, or otherwise felt like the last few minutes reading this post was a worthwhile investment of your time. If you enjoyed our content, there are a few ways that you can help promote what we do and keep us on the road a little longer:

  • Follow us on social media platforms likeYouTubeFacebook, and Instagram. The more viewers, subscribers, likes and comments, the better our pages rank. 
  • Share this article or our website with others that you think might enjoy it. 

Our Bus Has a House Door!

Some of our most dedicated readers might remember that right after we purchased our bus in Fall 2016, we traveled 1500 total miles with Rachael’s family to go skiing at Monarch Mountain, near Salida, CO. The drive was incredibly helpful in figuring out how the bus drove on the interstate (i70 is fun), what kind of gas mileage we could expect, and any potential issues that might arise. The most annoyingly obvious problem that our fun little bus had was a drafty front door. The bifold doors had seen better days and let in all sorts of noise, cold air, and probably critters. My wife and I wanted a house door for the appearance, security, and heat/cool retention, so a house door was going to happen.

Skoolie Tip # 002: Always check your tires! By check, I don’t mean kick a couple of times and look at the tread. I mean jack the vehicle up and look at the rotation of the wheel and tire. We had a flat spot on our two front tires (likely from sitting) that were causing a very obvious shake in the steering at 62.3 MPH that was discovered on our first long trip in the skoolie. We replaced our front tires in Wichita, KS and the rest of the trip was smooth. 

Like many of our projects, it starts with me, Rachael, and/or her father finding something of interest in a thrift store, dumpster, or Habitat for Humanity Restore and bringing it home. On this occasion, Rachael and her father found a solid wood door on one of their adventures and brought it home to be used on the skoolie. The door was significantly narrower than the bus opening, so some building was required.

I created a frame out of 2×4’s and mounted them into the steel frame of the bus with self-tapping screws. The screws hold very tight, but if necessary I will reinforce the frame with bolts through the exterior of the bus. Next, I chiseled out slots for the hinges on the door and the frame and installed the hinges. As with most of our bus build pictures, I remember to take pictures of the easy stuff and not the hard stuff.

I hole sawed out the holes for the door lock and handle and installed those promptly after. Everything fit as expected and the lock secures the door as desired.

There was a certain rush in getting the door hung as we were about to leave for a two-week trip to the Canadian Rockies and didn’t want to leave the bus unsecured in our absence. If you want to read more about our trip to Alberta and BC, check out a couple of links below:

BANFF, AB: OKIENOMAD’S TRIP THROUGH CANADA’S OLDEST NATIONAL PARK

THE ICEFIELDS PARKWAY: PROMENADE DE GLACIERS

All done! Well not quite. We still need to trim out the inside of the door frame to stop the door from closing too far, insulate the small imperfections and gaps, and trim out the the interior and exterior of the door. I will update this post when we get that completed, but until then our bus is secure and looks 100x better than the old bifold doors.

If you have any questions about the door addition or comments, let us know! We love hearing from people that are following our adventures and progress.

Thank you so very much for taking the time out of your day to read about our adventures and view our photos. If you haven’t yet, please take a couple more minutes to follow us on Instagram and subscribe to our channel on YouTube. Take a look around our website and if you see anything you like or have any suggestions, please let us know by commenting or e-mailing us at okienomads@gmail.com.

error

Enjoy our content? Help spread the word! ;)

Follow by Email
YouTube
YouTube
Instagram