Bliss on a bus
BACK FROM THEIR SHAKEDOWN ROAD TOUR TO NEWFOUNDLAND AND BACK, COUPLE CONSIDERS THEIR SKOOLIE CONVERSION A SUCCESS
SEAN TAMARA MCKAIG AND and their dog, Sam, are posing for a family portrait in their Skoolie.
If you follow Instagram, you know a Skoolie is a school bus converted into a camper or sometimes a home.
Their Skoolie is a shorty — half the size of a bus you see bouncing kids to school. It’s parked at the Princess Point lot so we can admire its simple lines. It looks like a loaf of bread on wheels.
The three are recently back from a shakedown cruise to Newfoundland. The 7,000 kilometre trip confirmed the conversion from a 10-passenger school bus to a comfy camper is a success.
“We can cook our own dinner, stop where we want, or go out to eat because the bus is short enough to park in a normal spot,” Tamara says as we chat around the dinner table at the back of the bus.
The McKaigs got the bug to bus around North America after a conventional driving trip across Canada.
“We loved it but we were spending so much money on hotels, we decided we needed to get a trailer,” Sean says.
That was until the documentary “Expedition Happiness” turned up on their Netflix feed. It’s about a couple travelling the world in their converted school bus — what’s not to love?
Two weeks later the McKaigs bought a 2001 school bus in British Columbia and white-knuckled it back to Hamilton. The vintage bus was geared for climbing mountains. It chugged back home like a donkey dreaming of retirement.
And that was just the start of the adventure. But adventure and the McKaigs are pals.
FIVE
YEARS AGO they quit their jobs, sold their suburban house in Oakville and moved to the Kirkendall neighbourhood. Everything about Hamilton appealed to them — the city living perched on the edge of hiking trails, food, art and walkability. Sean now works at the CBC as a senior manager of website development. The office is in Toronto, but he can work from home too. Tamara is in digital marketing. For four years they owned the Canoe Trading Co. on Locke Street.
Though the bus cost just $2,500, it’s essentially rebuilt from inside to out. Sean reads off a laundry list of repairs: springs, shocks, brake lines, U joints, rear differential, radiator, transmission. They were on a firstname basis with everyone at the Napa auto repair centre in Milgrove. Now the bus drives like a dream. It can easily do 120 km/h and gets better mileage, though 23 litres/100 km is what it averages. Their trip to Newfoundland cost $2,000 in gas, but there were no hotel bills to pay.
After the stuff you don’t see came the fun part: turning a passenger bus into a camper bus. Sean did most of the work himself, stripping the interior back to the metal and putting many layers in to make it a livable space. He painted the metal with Rustoleum, added insulation and caulking, a new plywood floor covered with vinyl, Ikea cabinets, black walnut countertops, a two burner stove, pine panelling in the ceiling, heat, a composting toilet, and a very comfortable bed that converts to seating.
“We loved (Hamilton) Fibreglass and Foam Supply on Ottawa Street, and Ottawa Textiles,” Sean says. “We tried to shop as local as we could.”
Tamara does an excellent tour of the interior for us (check out the video at thespec.com) and shows the one flaw they discovered on the trip east. The drawers kept opening when the bus went around curves. They installed better locks when they got home. For the conversion of the bus they budgeted $25,000 and are right on target. About half went to the mechanical repairs.
“If you don’t do it first, you’ll need to do it later, and you don’t want to break down on the road,” Tamara says.
Wisely, they researched a lot before work began. On Instagram they followed #skoolie and #vanlife, learning about fitting interior layouts into a short bus.
Each trip, they make discoveries. Because of its short size, they can park the bus in regular campground sites instead of RV hook-up areas, which can become like parking lots. There are opportunities to camp on Crown land and Federal land for free and then there’s boon-docking — where individuals let you park on their land for free.
Next year the McKaigs and Sam will strike out for Utah; with a National Park pass in hand, they plan to visit the beautiful open spaces in Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon and beyond. When they aren’t using the bus themselves, they plan to list it for rent on RVesy.com and outdoorsy.com
“But 50 per cent of the time we’ll use it, for the major trip and on fourday weekends, places like Algonquin,” Sean says.
The McKaigs share their experiences on Instagram @aventyr_co. There, in photos and a few short sentences, you can learn about bliss on a bus.
23 litres/100 km is what Skoolie averages. Their trip to Newfoundland cost $2,000 in gas, but there were no hotel bills to pay. PHOTOGRAPHS BY BARRY GRAY, THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR