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.