Why are we traveling for a year on a ... bus?

We're hitting the road

Our family of nine has hit the open road on a trip that will take us across the country together, for 12 months. You could call it a road trip, or road schooling- but we'd be reluctant to call it a vacation. Families that have made this decision report that it strengthens their relationships, tries their might, taxes their sanity and ... they wouldn't trade the experience for anything. Families from all walks of life and social classes and family size have tackled this dream, so we've decided to give it a try and become a Family on the Road. We'll keep our home and plan to return in the summer of 2011 - but we're not closed to opportunities that may cross our path. It's taken a lot of preparation to get to this point, as if we were moving across the country... our bills come online,  we sold one of our businesses, and we're tackling home school for all seven children this year. So far, not one person that we've discussed 'the Big trip' with has urged caution or advised against doing it. We are continually impressed by the number of people that have done this themselves, with their own young families, or during their childhood (back when you could crawl around the wood paneled station wagon with backward facing seats).

For us, there's no turning back now.

We put this website together to serve two purposes: mostly to remind ourselves what just happened, so we can look back and remember where we've been; and to communicate with our family and friends about how the trip is going.

Our Bus Blog is the part of the website that gets the most attention, and is updated regularly.

The seed is planted

I have always enjoyed road trips.

In my youth, we would make the annual Christmas trek to Colorado Springs, the summer journey to Minnesota- and all the kids crawled around in the back of the station wagon.

In the summer of 2009, while Kelly was traveling with our 2 youngest children, I took the other 5 kids and borrowed a friend's Class C Tioga, then hit the road for a week. We intended to drive to Oregon to visit my mother, but ended up in Utah with engine trouble for 3 days.

That surprise kept us from reaching the coast, but it revealed to us that no matter where we are, it's going to be fun. We discovered things we would never have even known about each other, and traveling- if the engine hadn't conked out.

Reaping what we've sown

In April of 2010, we sold our family run movie theater, that required us to be at 'home' especially during peak travel times. With the sale of that business, and before we get started back to work until we 'retire', we decided to take action on this dream...

We began discussing the concept enamored by the fantasy of traveling in a big old bus, maybe even something we converted ourselves. As we looked closer at the options for a family on the road (FOTR) we looked into a travel trailer, fifth wheel, class C RV and bus conversions... The fifth wheel is the most popular for most FOTR, but we couldn't find a tow vehicle that would haul 9 people. In addition, storage is an issue for any option other than a bus (buses have lots of 'basement' storage). Finally, after months of talking about it almost every night, traveling to 5 other states to look at buses over several months, Kelly challenged me to make the decision on which bus we should purchase, because she knew it would work out (<-- that was a diplomatic paraphrase). Two weeks later Ethan and I flew to Nashville to drive the best contender home (see our blog for the gory details of the trip during the Nashville flood).

On May 5th, 2010 at 11:05pm, we rolled into our Colorado driveway- 1,400 miles from where we started in Tennessee, where we found our bus after months of searching. Our trip across the United States began in the late afternoon of August 10th, 2010.

UPDATE: Our trip gently came to an end on July 4th, 2011 at 5:15pm, after 18,250 miles of travel when we rolled back into our home town- just in time for the best fireworks display EVER! We'll be updating the website to reflect the entire trip over the coming days and weeks. We will maintain it for some time as a reference for those preparing to head out on their own Big Trip!

Follow along on the latest news of our adventure, on the Bus Blog.