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. ...