It's Cold Outside!

The kids igloo icy and frozen.

Well it's been so cold the last few days. SO COLD!! It has stayed below freezing all day for days. Our van didn't start this morning and we had to walk the two blocks to church and it was like 11F outside.
So yesterday, and it was colder yesterday, hubby goes out to start the bus and... YEAH!!! ...it started!!! Sub freezing outside and she still starts up just fine. How cool is that!

Driving "Tahanan" back to Utah.

Our excited kids with the bus.

Part 2 (David's perspective)

Driving "Tahanan" back home wasn't an easy feat, I haven't driven a bus, except when I took the school bus driver course which I passed when I was still in U.S. Army. I was very apprehensive about driving a bus with a manual transmission, but I did just fine. Lisa served as my navigator which was not an easy task either. We decided instead of going back through Las Vegas we would take a shorter route through Carson City, Nevada.  Rick, the guy whom we bought the bus from, was kind enough to print out directions for us. So we set off using printed directions from yahoo.com and headed back to Utah. We enjoyed the California back roads. California is such a beautiful state. I love the scenery and  the quiet and peaceful country roads. I said to myself "this is the kind of route you get from a tour bus driver!" Besides selling us the bus Rick also owns a tour bus company.

The bus on the road to Utah.

Some of the beautiful landscape along the road. Victor my son took most of the pictures on this trip.

As we travel along, the road got steeper and steeper. Before we realized it we were on a small, very steep road. The bus was just fine but our van was overheating from the climb. The road was so narrow that we were worried that we might not be able to turn around. Luckily, after few more turns, we found a turn off and stopped to decide what to do. It turned out that in the middle of excitement of finishing the transaction with Rick, we all didn't realized that the route we are on would take us straight up over the mountain and through Yosemite Park. The roads were steep and narrow, so narrow that  buses are prohibited. Lisa was so busy looking for directions that she and I missed all the signs that say "Buses Not Allowed." As we were talking about going back, a highway patrolman came and told us that we can't go up that road. He was nice enough about not giving us any ticket and followed us as we go back down to make sure all are safe. We backtracked and stopped at a small camp store called "Chinese Camp Store and Kiwi Tavern", to ask for directions. The guy was really too busy to help, but was too helpful not to. He ended up drawing us a directions and begged us to hurry because of a coming storm. He said we didn't want to be driving through the the mountain in a storm.

The California Highway Patrol and the bus.

The camp store where we got the good direction.

I just followed Lisa all the way to Utah.

We then went through all these beautiful towns: Angel's Camp, San Andreas, Mukelumne Hill, and Jackson. Too bad, it was already dark when we drove by the Lake Tahoe area. We will come back to see that place for sure.
 It was 8:00 at night when we arrived in Carson City, Nevada. After a long drive over all those winding up and down roads we were ready for a rest. We found  a cheap but very accommodating place to rest for the night and best of all it has a bus parking. It was the American Best Value Inn. Lisa told me that the guy at the desk said "I'm not counting heads tonight just beds" after telling him that there were seven of us 2 adult and five kids. Good thing for us.

The hotel sign.

The kids in the hotel room, watching t.v.

On the "loneliest road in America".

After the much needed rest, we continued our trip the following morning. We love the vastness, the open road of Nevada. We stopped at the town called  Silver Springs. We found gas station to put air on one of the tire but they don't have one. The clerk were nice to tell us where all the truck stops are. 16 miles or so was the town of Fernley, from there we took Highway 50, dubbed as the "Loneliest Road in America" and it was rightly named that. We love the quiet road but there were not many truck stops. We were worried about the bus breaking down but she kept going. From a distance we saw a strange looking tree, as we get closer, the vines hanging from the trees turned out to be hundreds of shoes hanging down from the tree. We wanted to stopped but the kids were all getting hungry so we planned on going back someday to take pictures of it. Passed through the town of Austin, Nevada, I love all these little towns, they have something unique about them. The next town we stopped at to get something to eat was the town of Eureka. Ahh found the best burger in my life!, who could have thought the the best burgers are in Eureka, Nevada. The people there are friendly too. Hit the road again with happy tummy and happy kids, they love getting their turn to ride in the bus. After a really long drive going through Ely, Nevada and Delta, Utah, we finally arrived home. It was midnight. Time to park the bus and rest...

Postscript. These are what we learned, there are so many people who are willing to help some strangers. Thank you all for all the help you rendered to us. Me and my wife felt much much closer to each other as we make our journey...even though we were in separate vehicles.

We Found The Bus!!!

Part 1

Well, on November 11th, and right before the snow started we found our bus!! It was listed on Craigslist.com for probably only four hours before we saw it. It really sounds great and so we called right away. The guy sounded like a decent guy and gave us lost of info.We of course asked as many questions as we could and still feeling good about the bus went ahead and told him that we were interested in buying.

Hayward, CA

We found out that the bus, a 1981 Gillig school bus about 38'-40' ft. long, That was owned previously by a private school. So it has been well maintained. The man who had the bus had just bought it from the school in order to convert it into a party bus. He had all new tires put on and has the bus painted black. It was then that he and his drivers decides that because the bus had a standard shift transmission it was unsuited to what they wanted to use it for. I can just imagine then having to stop on all those hills around San Francisco and not being able to get the bus moving again. The other plus with this bus is that it has had a new engine installed and that now has only about 90,000 miles on it. The Seller said that because the school had plenty of available funds that instead of rebuilding the existing engine or buying a new rebuild the bus was taken to the dealership and had a new manufactured engine and a platinum clutch plate installed. Everything seems to be in good working order in fact the only thing that we have been able to discover that we don't like about the bus is that it is geared for the mountains and has a governor on it that only allows it to go 60mph tops. (That made for a very long ride home, let me tell you! But more on that in a minute.)

The Five Travelers! They will have a lot more room on a bus.

So we dropped everything, left the house a mess and pulled the kids out of school the next day so we could go to Cali and get our bus. (Hayward, California that is.) I made the mistake of telling the kids that we would stop by the beach while we where there, which I now regret. This ignorant desert girl had no idea that there would be a place on the pacific shore that wouldn't have a beach. Silly me. Sorry kids, I am far from perfect. But our first big road trip will be to the beach, promise. Oops, maybe I'd better not promise. That's what got me in trouble the first time.
But anyway back to our story. We actually drove there the long way, down through Las Vegas. We had to stop by the bank on the way. I know that's a long why to go to get to a bank, but that is a story for another time. Everything pretty much went smoothly. Luckily our five kids travel well but even then we had our share of "Are we there yet's" and diaper problems. We got into Cali late and ended up sleeping in the car. I told the kids, "Hey, your dad does it all the time. Now you'll see what it's like." You should have seen the look on there faces then. Priceless and a good lesson too! So we make it all that way to California and survived. What we didn't know was that was the easy part of the trip.

The buses we have looked at and buses on our wish list.

It is not easy to look for something you really want or I should say find the bus we need. There are many up and down. Sometimes we thought we found the one that will suit us and just find out later on that it has been sold or way beyond our budget. Anyway here some of the buses that we have considered of getting but are already sold or priced way up within our means. We have a list of buses that are good candidates and that we are still looking at.

Here is the one David really likes but picking it up would be impossible for him to do because the pick up dates falls into the middle of the week, he didn't want to take days off from work. We wished they are more flexible on pick up dates. This is located in Lompoc, California. A beautiful 1972 Crown school bus. The pictures are InterScola's property

This was auctioned off on Ebay. Another view of the bus. David love the curves on the bus, he said this bus has the character of a he wanted. I am worried about the availability of the parts of this bus.Apparently, the bus company went out of business. There are still number of these buses which are still operational.

The rounded butt :)

Another bus auctioned off on Ebay by InterScola. This bus is just beautiful. We found out that a lot of these old buses ended up at scrap yard...what a waste! Thanks to InterScola and the school district who have chosen to sell this classic bus instead of sending it to a scrap yard.

David likes the storage under the bus.

Here is a picture of the rear of the bus.

Here is another classic bus, a 1978 Gillig 636D double axel 40ft.

Another picture of the Gillig bus I found listed in craiglist.com I called the seller but I was too late somebody already coming to see  it. I told him if ever the buyer back out, I will buy it without looking at it. This one is in California too.

Another Gillig school bus I found at craiglist.com. This one is a 1982 Gillig 61 passenger. We called the seller in California right away but again it was sold already.

Here is a bus we just found last night and still not sold , so were are going to California today! November 5 2010

The inside of the black school bus. The seller seems honest so wish us luck.