The First Steps to Location Independent

We are now a few days into our decision to transition to location independent living.  We went into high gear trying to find a suitable ride.  We have looked at several motor homes, and even made an offer on one yesterday.  The gentleman wasn't apparently as motivated of a  seller as I thought him to be.  We are fine with that though as we have been considering the bus/conversion option as well.  If I had the money we would love to be cruising around in an older Wanderlodge by Bluebird.

As it stands, we are now looking at purchasing a school or church bus and roughing it while we build our own custom coach as we go.  We are both internet savvy, and Craigslist has tons of treasures if one has the time and patience to find them.  I was surprised that it was Sy pushing me for this option.  She has been camping only a few times and we roughed it in a tent for a couple of nights at a time.  I was the one being a whiner about not having a bed and a shower, the guy who lived on the streets of Colorado Springs for a year as a 19 something.

We are going to look at a Partridge familyish church bus tomorrow.  It is well within our price range and the lady has already volunteered that she is willing to negotiate on the price.  There is a glut of retired school buses on the market in our price range.  We are thinking that we will build as we go along.  We will start with the most basic necessities such as a composting toilet, and a generator, and water storage and disposal.  Our camping setup will need to be upgraded just a bit to accommodate everyday cooking use.

We are already working on a rough floor plan so we have an idea of what we will need to acquire to convert said bus to a nice RV.  We will eventually be completely solar powered.  We are playing with the idea of a gravity fed water system.  By using a composting toilet, we will not need to have or clean a black water tank.  Our gray water can be used to water a lawn.  Down the road we will spend the money to convert the diesel to run on used vegetable oil.  It runs a couple of grand for that conversion, but will save bazillions over the life of the vehicle with the added benefit of  a much lower environmental footprint.

After much consideration we decided a bus is a better built and safer vehicle than most motor homes. We can build it to suit us.  We are excited and scared at the same time.  It is going to be a great adventure, and we can't wait.