Full-Time Couple in a Short Bus

[zelseman]

Awesome looking trip so far. I have been talking the skoolie up to my fancee, and she is starting to get on board with the idea. One more thread I can show her to get her hooked!

My wife LOVES our skoolie. Not enough to let me 4x4 swap it, but she has a point, it has never gotten stuck or not gotten us to a destination. Alaska will be the test in a year or so. Send her over to www.okienomads.com, we have a ton of stuff up there. Good luck on getting her on board, we wouldn't change a thing about moving out of our house and living in this thing!

 

[jonb8]

I'm still in the build process but I bought a larger bus and plan to full time in it after the son is out of college... We will keep the bus on the road and flat tow the jeep to explore in..

 

[zelseman]

I'm still in the build process but I bought a larger bus and plan to full time in it after the son is out of college... We will keep the bus on the road and flat tow the jeep to explore in..

View attachment 503148

I love it! I think the perfect size is somewhere between yours and ours. What engine/trans combo did you go with?

 

[jonb8]

466 with the 643 Allison, we wanted to stay as small as we could and still have a bathroom..

 

[rho]

AHH, I saw the C OOLBUS in san jose today, awesome!

 

[zelseman]

AHH, I saw the C OOLBUS in san jose today, awesome!

Was this directed at us? If so, that wasn’t our bus. At least unless my father in law is joy riding around the west coast. It’s supposed to be in his yard in oklahoma.

 

[rho]

Was this directed at us? If so, that wasn’t our bus. At least unless my father in law is joy riding around the west coast. It’s supposed to be in his yard in oklahoma.

Huh, maybe not then.... It did look an awful lot like yours... Although I suppose it could have been someone else with similar ideas about it. I wish I could have snagged a pic of it, oh well!

 

[zelseman]

There are a couple running around that have a similar paint color, mostly because it is super cheap on Amazon...battleship grey!
This is what ours looks like currently, we removed all of the skoolie lettering and numbers except the 12 on the front and it will likely go away sometime this year.

 

[zelseman]

I am never going to be able to keep this thread updated from our last year on the road, so here are some highlights.

We spent April-October 2018 traveling all over the Western US seeing 15-16 states, tons of National Parks and sooooo much free camping! We have plans to visit all 50 states in 3 years and see if our little bus can make it to the Dempster HWY in 2020.

 

[zelseman]

We have spent the bulk of the Winter and spring in Mexico housesitting and running around Baja in our 4Runner. The bus got a much needed rest and we got to realize how much we really enjoy traveling and living in our skoolie.

We traveled back to the states to switch out vehicles and to work a bit before heading north. We traveled to South Dakota for another house-sitting gig and had some interesting travel conditions.

It's hard to believe that Colorado is still getting snow in June, we even put off a trip to Rocky Mountain National Park due to the road being closed. We made it to SD and we are super fortunate to be housesitting for a family member with a wood-shop and garage!

The first item on the list was to replace our worn out shocks front and rear. From what I could tell, these were the original shocks from the factory. Both sets were easy to compress with my hands and once compressed, there was no rebound. I replaced the rears with Bilstein 4600's and KYB's in the front. Installation was super easy and it seems like the bus sits just a bit higher after the fact.

I haven't had a chance to drive it yet as there is more work to do on the bus, but the build quality looks great and I am really excited for new shocks! Also, we added some branding to the side windows and the back window.

 

[Overland Expo]

Beautiful photos!

 

[zelseman]

Apologies for the lack of updates. In South Dakota, we made some changes to the interior of the bus and added a Camp Chef oven...GAME CHANGER.

We ran around South Dakota for a month or so while hanging out with family and finishing up the bus and we are excited to plan another trip to the Black Hills soon.

Cave tour at Wind Cave NP

Crazy Horse Memorial for the Volksmarch

We left SD after the 4th of July and took off across the plains.
We are really learning to love working from campgrounds like at the headwaters of the Mississippi at Itasca State Park.

Boondocking on the Mississippi River.

Green Mountains in Vermont

Forest Service Campground in New York

Somewhere in the Adirondacks

State land in Eastern Maine

Lighthouse camping on Prince Edward Island

Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia

After visiting with family in NS, we buzzed back down into the US and followed the EAST coast and did mostly city touring. We visited Philly, Boston, and took off for more wild spaces.

National Forest camping in Red River Gorge, KY

Water crossing in the New River Gorge area

We made it to Arrington, VA for Overland Expo EAST and put in a couple of weeks of work before flying home for a couple of weeks.

 

[zelseman]

We flew back to Oklahoma as a family friend had some Grand Canyon permits for backpacking, plus it was good to visit family and friends.

We returned to our bus in Virginia and took off for the coast and the Outer Banks.

Paddling outside of Charleston, SC

More Charleston

Cemetery exploring in Savannah, GA

Florida exploring

Boondocking on Mobile Bay, AL

 

[java]

Soooo. Good! Backpacking makes remember how good the trucks are.

Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

 

[chilliwak]

Cool pics Zelseman. Me like! Thanks for posting up. Cheers, Chilli... ?