How We Infiltrated Mexico Twice from a National Park (And Why You Should Too) A Complete Guide to Crossing into Boquillas del Carmen from Big Bend — With Burros, Bureaucracy, and a Four-Year-Old in Full Firefighter Gear The border crossing that a U.S. Customs agent couldn't get through without laughing. I have now led my family across the Rio Grande into Mexico twice. Once on a spontaneous Sunday in 2019, in the middle of a minivan circumnavigation of the United States, with three boys, no plan, and a four-year-old dressed head-to-toe as a firefighter. And once in 2022, without our beloved overloaded skoolie (converted school bus), which had been diplomatically informed by the Mexican border that its presence was not required. Both times were absurd. Both times were wonderful. Both times ended at a video kiosk where a U.S. Customs officer in El Paso had to compose himself before clearing us back into America. This is the story of both crossings —...

By the Nomadventure Family | Skoolie Life · Bus Conversion · Tiny Living on Wheels There is a specific category of decision that sounds, in the planning stage, like an act of bold genius — and reveals itself, somewhere around the third week of construction, to be an act of bold insanity. Buying a retired school bus from your local Maine school district and converting it into a family home is firmly in this category. We did it anyway. And we would do it again. But let's be honest about how it actually went — because the internet is full of stunning skoolie build reveals featuring reclaimed wood countertops and string lights, and suspiciously short on documentation of the part where you're in a Lowe's parking lot in South Carolina in November, rolling bus-green paint onto a 40-foot vehicle by hand, wondering whether "sea mist green" was really the stealthy color choice you thought it was back when you were warm and optimistic in Maine. How Base Ca...

The mullet bus. Business in the front. Pure chaos in the back. No regrets.   We had just sold our sailboat. Maine winter was circling like a creditor. Our family of five — two adults clinging to the dream of being "adventurous people," and three children who had opinions about everything — needed a new plan. We needed warmth. We needed wheels. We needed, apparently, a school bus. There is a moment in every questionable life decision when you think: this is either genius or a cry for help . Buying a school bus and driving it across two countries with children inside it sits somewhere in that grey zone, possibly closer to the cry-for-help end. But here we are, on the other side of it, sun-tanned and slightly smug. We drove our converted school bus — a skoolie , for those not yet initiated — across the United States and deep into Mexico, and we are here to tell you it was one of the best decisions we ever made. Also one of the loudest. ...

By the Nomadventure Family | Backpacking · Family Travel · Pacific Crest Trail There is a particular kind of madness that descends upon a family when the children start outpacing the parents on a trail. Not metaphorically — literally. One moment you are the wise, experienced adults shepherding your offspring up a boulder field, pointing out interesting lichens and pretending you know what kind of bird that was. The next moment, the kids are forty yards ahead, questioning your cardio fitness with their eyes, and you are bent double over your trekking poles wondering when, exactly, your legs staged this mutiny. This is where we are. And we couldn't be happier about it. Our family has sailed between Maine and the Bahamas, clipped into limestone walls high above the Sonoran Desert in El Potrero Chico, Mexico, and navigated our beloved converted school bus — Base Camp, a 40-foot Skoolie who has opinions about tight turns — through enough mountain switchbacks to give a G...