I blurted out “I never want to leave; I want to do this all the time.” CJ immediately agreed and we started brainstorming ways to camp all the time. 

As much as I wish we could forget, the COVID-19 pandemic overtook the world in 2020. My fiancé at the time, CJ, and I felt the effects like everyone else. I went from the hustle culture of getting my master’s degree in international affairs and working part-time in our nation’s capital to sitting on the couch at home, watching TikTok most of the day. CJ was at his peak as one of the best gymnasts in the country and, all of a sudden was no longer able to practice. We both lost our jobs as gymnastics coaches, and it felt as if all our future plans were falling apart.

Fast forward a couple of months to August 2020. CJ and I frequently drove the two hours to Shenandoah National Park to get out of the city and enjoy hiking and camping. We’re sitting by the fire after a hearty tin foil dinner, sad we must leave in the morning, but still soaking in the moment. I blurted out “I never want to leave; I want to do this all the time.” CJ immediately agreed and we started brainstorming ways to camp all the time. 

What if we lived in a van? Lots of people are doing it now, and it’s trendy. We had a pandemic wedding in October and we decided to re-sign our lease one more time, which would expire in October 2021. Our goal was to move into a van or build one out by then.

We packed money away. My part-time position had filtered into full-time, and I was earning a decent salary as a government contractor. CJ took on multiple part-time jobs, and we both coached almost daily. Those 75-hour work weeks felt like they were going to last forever. Looking for a van was also not going well - too expensive, too short, bad engines. 

Almost a year of looking in person and online left us desperate. CJ clicked on a link that says “big vehicles,” and there it is, a 2010 Chevy Express 5-window BRIGHT yellow school bus. Hey, we’ve got nothing to lose, so let’s go look at it. We bought it the next day. CJ drove it to my hometown in Missouri (there was no space for a bus in DC), where we would move a month later to start building. 

In October 2021, we moved to Missouri, where we continued to coach gymnastics. I worked remotely full-time for my company in DC, and CJ built our soon-to-be new home. Our support system in Missouri is incredible. We couldn’t have done it without our family and friends. 

Demolition took longer than expected; the seats, walls, ceiling, and floors came out. It seemed like the bus was being held together by millions of tiny screws. All of them had to come out, and with everyone, we were thanking our lucky stars that they weren’t rivets. Every crevice needed to be examined for holes and rust. 

Using YouTube and our best guessing techniques, the bus slowly came together, back to front. CJ and I had a nice compromise going, with me rushing him along and him telling me to slow down or our bus would fall apart. Winter came and went as we framed everything out, installed plumbing, wired electricity, and spent many, many hours sanding, painting, and staining. 

We started an Instagram account to keep track of our progress so we would have memories to look back on and branded ourselves “On The Rhoades”, @OTRhoades on social media, a pun with our last name that was too obvious not to use.

We decided to paint the bus tan—not a stand-out color, something neutral, something earthy. It turned out better than expected. Two coats of Sher-ken paint, and we were good to go. Getting the bus registered was intimidating but much less of a headache than we thought it would be. Vermont allows self-converted vehicles to be registered in their state by mail. If you see a Skoolie with Vermont plates, they’re probably not from there! 

Adding solar to the bus was expensive, but we wanted to ensure it was done right. With an electrical engineer and computer engineer as sisters and brothers-in-law, respectively, we were able to wire everything together relatively quickly. We have four 100-watt panels bolted to the roof. Those are wired to our solar charge controller, connected to our three 100-amp-hour smart batteries. Those are in turn, wired to the 2000-watt inverter charger. 

We have four outlets in the bus, all of which have two 110-volt and two USB outlets. We also installed an air conditioner on the top of the bus, which is wired directly to the breaker box. That air conditioner was a lifesaver when we made the mistake of going to the Gulf of Mexico in the heat of summer!

Our full-size bed is in the back of the bus, and we made it high enough to go over our Australian Cattle Dog’s crate and another potential dog crate - as we were hoping to get a German Shepherd somewhere along the way. It’s also big enough to hold our storage for camping gear, extra clothes, etc., and our 40-gallon fresh water tank. Our gray water tank is mounted under the bus. We have a 5-foot couch, under which is our electrical system. The fridge opens from the top and is incredibly energy efficient. 

We created a countertop out of maple wood with a sink and a stove. The stove is where things started to get sticky (metaphorically). Our 4-burner stove fits perfectly into our counter. We wanted to use the small portable green camping bottles so we didn’t have to store the propane outside. Still, after trying, failing, and spewing propane everywhere multiple times, we gave up on jerry-rigging the gas lines to be compatible with the green bottles, so much for a stove. We bought a cooktop and have used it ever since.

We made the decision to have a shower, and this was one of the last parts of our build. There’s no hot water, but it works well in a pinch. The thing is, we’ve only used it a couple of times. There are so many Planet Fitness locations, and we’d rather shower outside using our sink faucet. So, like many others, our shower became storage space. There you can find our shoes, dirty clothes basket, and an assortment of other items. We also started our journey with a homemade composting toilet that we ended up never using and getting rid of to save space.

Last on the list: the front, the door, a bike rack, and random finishing touches including trim, curtains, etc. These things were not completely finished before we began traveling, and only a couple of them have been finished along the way. That travel bug is real. In May 2022 we set off, going south for some reason. We made it down to Florida, but it only took about a week to realize we were headed in the wrong direction. 100 degrees outside meant upwards of 110 or 115 inside the bus. Nights were full of mosquitos and sweat. But the beaches were nice, and we had saved enough money for both of us to quit our jobs. 

We found coffee shops that allowed dogs and spent the hot middle part of the day there. Mornings and evenings were for the beach, and we’d run our A/C as much as possible at night to cool it off. You might be wondering, “Why didn’t you just drive back north?” The answer is - that we booked a flight out of Florida to check off a huge bucket list item - Machu Picchu. But you can bet that as soon as we got back from Peru, we booked it up to Canada as fast as possible, only about 60 MPH in a Skoolie. 

As I mentioned earlier, CJ and I are former gymnasts and have spent over a decade coaching gymnastics. We love to stay active and have used the hashtag “#buslifefitness” to describe much of our online content. 

We do our best to stay fit while in the bus, working out at Planet Fitness when we can, and we even bought some dumbbells to keep in the bus and workout outside on warm days. I also took this opportunity to start training for a marathon. I’ve run in at least fifteen states and two countries at many elevations. I signed up for a marathon in January, and although there were many days I wanted to quit, I worked my butt off running four times a week.

Canada cooled us off, and we could start enjoying our travels a bit more. We made our way across the northern border of the U.S., stopping in new cities and further exploring old favorites. There are a lot of highly rated places I could tell you about, but I’d rather focus on the underrated places. The first of which is the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Sweet little towns right on Lake Michigan and Lake Superior with fantastic cliff jumping, hiking, and some of the best free national forest camping around. We thought we had found paradise until we looked up the weather in the winter. 

We ventured on, driving through South Dakota where we had our first buffalo encounter in Badlands National Park. An entire herd came right through our camp. We took photos and videos, once again feeling like we were in the best place on earth. But as nomads do, we moved on. 

We made it to Montana and Idaho, dipped into some natural hot springs, and made friendships that will last a lifetime. As we traveled through Oregon and Washington, we finally understood why most travelers stick to the West Coast. We now also understand why travelers stay out of cities (our license plates were stolen off our bus while we were sleeping). No worries, though; Vermont sent us new ones right away. 

As autumn was dwindling, so was our savings account. It was time to start working again. We settled in Arizona, and I flew to Missouri to drive our car back. I started tutoring online, and CJ drove for DoorDash. Between the two, we make ends meet. Our social media started picking up, so we make a little bit of cash from that now too. 

Almost every platform offers some sort of bonus program for professional accounts, and each month, creators who meet the guidelines are eligible to be in the program. We’ve been lucky enough to earn bonuses for one month for Instagram and two months for Facebook so far. It doesn’t pay much, but we are hopeful to keep growing our accounts and continue getting into the programs. 

We love sharing our lives, the good and the bad, with our followers and giving a glimpse into what it’s like living on the road. Another way we make money from social media is by creating user-generated content, or UGC for short. We reach out to brands and offer to make fun videos utilizing our gymnastics backgrounds that they can then post to their social media pages. They send us their product, we create content, and we get paid. It’s a great side gig for anyone needing remote work.

In December 2022, our lives changed drastically when CJ sent me a Facebook post one of his friends had made saying they rescued an adorable 8-month-old all-black German Shepherd. Less than a week later, we adopted Sol. This pup was the perfect addition to our already chaotic bus. Our red heeler, Kendrick, slowly adjusted to having a large, clumsy little brother, and Sol quickly realized that we were his forever family. I will never get tired of his tail wagging every time we give him the tiniest bit of attention, and he absolutely wants to please us as much as possible. 

Enough about the dogs, though. We had another life-changing event happen when we decided to go to a large nomadic gathering in the middle of the Arizona desert: Skooliepalooza. From all across the country, bus folk and other nomads travel to the same coordinates to share food, stories, and friendship. We had no idea what to expect, and reflecting back, any expectations we did have were exceeded substantially. The community was incredible, and the energy was unmatchable. 

In the middle of the Skooliepalooza, fun was my trail marathon. We drove to San Diego for a day to check off another bucket list item, and boy, was I nervous. My training paid off, but the run was still extremely difficult. At Mile 21 I hit a wall. Calf cramping, holding back tears, and breathing hard from the uphill climb, I took breaks when needed, but I am proud to say I did not walk at all. Just before five and a half hours, I crossed the finish line. My legs were Jello, but we drove back to Skooliepalooza, where we danced the night away at the best desert rave I’ve ever been to. (But I won’t tell you about the next day.)

We have so many options for where we want to go next and what we want to do. The beauty of living this life is that we’re not afraid to say we changed our mind or “let’s go here now” with little to no planning. We have some long-term goals of starting a family, opening a business, and exploring outside the U.S., but for now, we’re excited to continue bumping along in our Skoolie. We haven’t made it to Alaska or to Baja yet, so those are next on the list. We also want to do some renovations such as possibly ripping the shower out and replacing it with a desk. 

It’s been a whirlwind the last couple of years. At the start of 2020, I saw my life going in a completely different direction, but I am happy with where it’s taken me instead. CJ and I have had a theme for our life recently, and it is “plan to change plans”. I had a hard time changing plans while growing up, and I’m pleased to say that I am now much better at going with the flow. Whether it is day-to-day activities or life goals, we tend to plan just enough and then leave the rest up to fate. And to anyone reading this, I would say don’t do the same thing as us. Do your own thing. Create your own dreams, turn them into goals, and then make them happen. Do it while you’re young or do it while you’re old, either way, do it! We hope to see you one day “On the Rhoades”.