Today we’d like to introduce you to Kate and Aaron Massey.
Hi Kate and Aaron, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
Kate and I (Aaron) along with our daughter Eliza travel full time in our self-converted school bus (skoolie). Our bus is a 2007 Thomas Saf-T-Liner, and it is 32 feet long. We LOVE to go to National Parks, seeing the culture, history, environments and imagining how people could live in these cliff dwellings, mud huts, use the kiva’s, build 5 story homes out of nothing but mud, rock, and logs. These people were amazing. On the day in question, we traveled into Chaco Culture National Historic Park. We had thought that the road in was completely paved but OH BOY were we wrong. No big deal though, right, we were going to go out a different way. So away we go down a frozen dirt road with lots of washboards and a small stream crossing. This was a fun adventure as we thought we would be going out a different, paved way.
If you ever get the chance to go to this beautiful canyon, DO IT. However, not when the road is wet or frozen. You see that other way out was not an option as it was even worse than the road in. We decided that taking the same road out that we came in on was the right thing to do. We took the car off the trailer and hitched the trailer to the Subaru CrossTrek; we love our car! The bus was then free to only be pulling (pushing in our case with a rear engine) only itself. Well, we got to the dirt road from the park and had to cross a small ditch; BOOM no big deal, we’ve got this!
Along came the frozen mud but wait. It’s not frozen now. Kate crossed the mud with the car and trailer; she did awesome with the car and trailer. She slid a bit but nothing too bad… Ok, my turn with the bus, remember – rear engine – as I started across the mud-infested high-crowned road the bus decided to do its own little dance into the ditch! With mud above the passenger side rear tire (the tires are nearly 4 feet tall) and against the ditch bank we were stuck. It’s ok we’ve been here before, yes, we didn’t learn our lesson the first time, we’ll just use the car to bump pull us out. It did NOT work. We broke the winch line – twice. . . we were able to move the but about 50 yards along the ditch but that was all we got and then the bus just stopped! No more movement and here we are on about a 20-degree angle.
We were able to load up the car and get to a place where we got cell signal; we called and called tow companies. We found one yes 1 only 1 that would be willing to come pull it out BUT it would be the next day. There’s no way we could sleep in the bus; we decided to get a hotel.
The next morning, we were off to go get the bus and had a ride with the tow company out to the bus. They were AWESOME; they got the bus out in about 20 minutes.
Cost:
Tow = $980.00
Hotel = $240.00
Keeping calm and being able to smile through it (with a few tears in there too) = $Priceless$
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
This adventure in our skoolie has been nothing but AMAZING! We travel north in the summer and south in the winter; we attempt to avoid the snow and freezing weather. Next up – Alaska in June!
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
In 2004 I (Aaron) joined the US Air Force, in 2015 I met Kate in England. Kate is British and I was able to somehow convince her to marry me in 2016. We continued to live in England till 2018. I also retired from the military in 2016 due to medical issues. We are now able to travel full-time and not worry about work at this time.
Do you have any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
(Aaron) Flying to my grandpa’s house in Oregon for the summer. I could be me up there and I was trusted to take care of myself; it was wonderful!
Pricing:
- Bus Cost: $4500
- Build total cost including the bus: $25,000
- Cost of the tow: $980.00
- Cost of the hotel: $240.00
- Cost of a smile: $priceless$
Contact Info:
Image Credits
Aaron
Roz
February 8, 2023 at 11:04 pm
You two are just the best hoomans and they make and love the cutest hoomans!!! We are so excited to host them in Alaska!!!