Update from the North Carolina.

Many days have passed since the last update and so much has happened I don't think I'll be able to fit it all into a single update. Dec.24 was eventful as ever, we took a detour from Virginia into West Virginia to go see a national forest without knowing it would have no road markings of any sort, ended up getting ridiculously lost for hours. We ended up spending the night on some unknown road with only 1 sign pointing us into the right direction, which ended up taking a lot longer than we thought to get to the next day. Traveling on roads that were never EVER meant to see a school-bus pass through them.










The next day was a pleasant drive on smaller non-highway roads through beautiful scenery through a small chunk of Maryland/Virginia and we ended the day climbing up a steep ridge to Comers's Campsite where we met a motorcyclist who had biked up the ridge just to camp in a tiny tent.


We spent a cold night in the bus and woke to a beautiful sunrise, hiked up a small trail to a full 360 view of VA, it was awesome.








Every rest stop we've stopped at along the way has had friendly people interested in the bus and what we're doing. Nearly everyone wants to look inside the bus then are shocked by what they see in there, I guess they expect it to not look like a living room.

On Dec.26 we managed to join up with the Blue Ridge Parkway, an awesome scenic drive southwest where nearly every stop offers amazing views over mountains and plains.

Special shout-out to the family from the area that was super friendly and excited for us on this trip, one of the members is planning a trip to Mt. Everest and is looking for participants, if you're interested please comment on this blog and i'll get you in touch.





We finished the day by starting our custom paint job on the bus, which looks f*cking awesome even though we've only done the hood and passenger side frame of the cab.

Today's plan, Dec.27 is to travel southwest through Asheville NC to the Great Smoky Mountains. The Blur Ridge Parkway was closed for some reason this morning, forcing us to take a big turnaround and backtrack a few miles but we're hoping to catch back up with it
 after Asheville and make our way down to Cherokee.

So far the trip is awesome and more fun than I've had in a while, highly looking forward to the rest of it.

- Edit - Please feel free to comment on all these posts, if you're someone we met on the road viewing this blog, post a comment letting us know where we met!

Almost on the road.

Collin and I decided on the spur of the moment to go to Vermont for his family's Thanksgiving. We were in Bethel to say goodbye to a few friends at Sunday River when we decided to go straight to VT instead of going back home to my parents. We hung out at Collin's parents' house for a few days, enjoyed the hot tub, ate tasty thanksgiving food and got to sleep in without being woken up, it was wonderful.
While we were there we managed to pick up a full sized couch for the bus, as well as an awesome funky futon that doesn't take up much space. I also welded a few brackets for shelving and nuts to the roof to hang things off of, best part is I only caught myself on fire once!

After we'd finished the customization of the bus we headed back to Maine to do a few more things to our living room on wheels, aka cut some boards for the shelving, grab a few things I'd left behind. We ran out of gas less than a mile away from the destination but luckily my sister went out and got us a jerrycan of diesel and we got the rest of the way with no problems. When we arrived we had a great fish dinner followed by a miniature Christmas celebration/stocking unwrapping around the tree. Good times were had by all.

The tentative plan is to head south towards New Orleans this Wednesday. Here's hoping Murphy doesn't show up again and delay our escape from the freezing New England weather.

Finally got the bus... but wait.

 Collin and I finally got the bus from the original place that was doing repairs on it, only to realize when driving it that it was overheating a lot faster than it should be and had some sort of coolant leak.

After bringing it to another repair place, we learned that the coolant isn't actually leaking but being squeezed out due to a pressure issue most likely due to a head gasket problem.

We're bringing the bus back to the garage tomorrow for further testing but the most likely scenario is that we won't be heading on the road for at least another week.

Going to to be hanging out in bowdoinham for at least a few more days while the beast gets a bit more work done on her.

Thinking about it now, we also need to find her a name..