The Fantastic Veggie Bus!

Greetings! Wow, I read my last blog and I can't believe how much has happened between now and then. I am in the last half of my second year as a Missouri Stream Team Assistant. This job has been exactly what I was looking for when my stint as a speech implementer came to end. I wanted to work in the environmental field however did not have formal training in this area. When this job opportunity showed up I knew it just had to be mine!! So I applied with gusto and they offered me the job. I spend a portion of my time working for the Missouri Stream Team Program and the other part working for James River Basin Partnership. I still, more than a year and a half later, have moments where I stop and think "Holy Cow! I can't believe I'm doing this!" I get the pleasure of working on projects, with people, and on topics that were mere fantasies before.
Chris has also found ways to combine work with passion. He currently is working at an Arabian horse farm. The opportunity for him to work with horses and expand his knowledge has been soul-satisfying.
Ema is now is the 6th grade. The Springfield Sudbury School, although we gave it our all and a lot of wonderful people around the world stepped forward with encouragement and donations, had to close. Our support locally just did not equal the need. She has been able to hang on to her motivation to learn and her passion for her own goals. She has her sights on being an author.
We still own our bus but it is in need of a paint job for us to be able to take it out in public. Guess our sanding job before the green tractor paint was applied was a bit on the weak side! We did just have some good friends of ours give us their 1982 Vanagon which we named in their honor, Elmer. We have missed having a Vanagon and are itching for spring so we can pack up and go!
We have a new endeavour brewing (not veggie related but still exciting for us) however it is not yet ready to be revealed.
Watching the way life weaves opportunities together creating an expanding path has been a journey to behold. Things are certainly not always easy but as we keep our desires and passion in focus the rest seems to fall into place. I have now had this experience hold true several times and it never ceases to amaze me.
All for now!
Tiff

It has been two years now since our trip but the Veggie Bus story continues to create interest. We have had articles appear about us in 7 (I think) newspapers including the latest which came out in July. We had a local TV news story done and in September we will be speaking, as well as displaying our veggie vehicles at a local Sierra Club meeting. We have the bus as well as a rabbit truck that has been converted and is my husbands daily driver. It has been a fun ride.
I have spent the last several years working as a speech implementer and volunteering as a founding member of a private school in our hometown, Springfield Sudbury School. We are opening in September. This, like the Fantastic Veggie Bus journey, is a dream held onto until it became a reality.
I am now allowing a space in my life to embrace newness. I desire to go back to school and get a degree in Environmental Science with an emphasis in Biology. I am currently looking for a job to fulfill me while another page of my life gets written. I will try and keep you posted!

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Chris, Tiff, Ema, and Jerry 

Welp, we made it! But first I need to catch everyone up. We spent about 3 days in Yellowstone and a couple in the Tetons. Boy, I love them Tetons! We soaked in some natural hot springs, saw the sights, met up with my cousin, and had such a great time. We also met some fabulous people that were traveling with the Adventure Bus. Seemed like a great way to vacation. Check out their web site. After Wyoming we went to Dinosaur National Monument in the corner of Utah and Colorado. We saw dinosaur bones that were 145 million years old.... I can't even wrap my head around that. The bus had to work really hard to get there. We went up and down and up and down for a long time. But the bus really held its own. From there we went through Colorado stopped by the Garden of the Gods and experienced the Royal Gorge. By this time Ema was actually getting tired of seeing cool things! Eastern Colorado and Kansas made for a long ride but we cut it into about 3 days and made it back to ol' Springfield.
We continued to easily get grease along our way. Grocery stores really seem to be a good place. We got a lot of grease from Albertsons and some smaller home town stores. The restaurants in the Tetons (not sure about Yellowstone) are all "green" restaurants. And though we didn't actually get any grease from them, it sure seems like a good place to get some. Chris did a lot of filtering! We would really like to come up with an easier method of doing this.
As we were collecting grease from a small store in the middle of Kansas we looked up to see a reporter standing there. That was a fun surprise. She said she would send us a copy of their small weekly paper when it came out.
So everything I have been focused on and put my energy into for so long has actually come around to the end. It is hard to believe. We traveled 4,641 miles and used approximately 500 gallons of grease. And, yes we still have 1/4 of a tank of diesel left!! Oh, the satisfaction. We crossed the continental divide 8 times, climbed some huge mountains, and saw amazing things. We grew individually and as a family, were able to share with a lot of people, and experience the general goodness of humanity. As I look through all our photos I wonder what all those vacationers say when showing their friends the picture of that big green bus they saw. It has been amazing. We want to take what we have learned about this process and expand on it. Now all I can think about is how can I do this again.....?

The end of August! Wow! Well, we did go crystal digging as planned and we loved it! That night and the next night we stayed at Elkhorn Hot Springs and did some more soaking. There's something about hot springs that seem to attract the neatest people. We ate dinner in the restaurant that night and as Chris and I talked to some new friends, Ema joined some other kids in an impromptu yoga class in the middle of the not busy and very laid back restaurant. The instuctor was a mom waiting for her food. We treated ourselves to a horseback ride the next day. It was one of the most beautiful forests I have ever seen. When we rolled on, we stuck to the scenic roads and tested the limits of the bus. Both the bus and the driver succeeded with flying colors and the views were worth it! We visited two different ghosts towns on our way back up to Missoula. One was in unrestored condition and the other very restored. It was great to see the two vastly different places. We ended up with a good sense of what the mining towns were like back then. After spending the night at a free unadvertised campsite discovered by being in the right place at the right time, we returned to Missoula. I'm starting to feel like I live here, hmmmmmm.
Chris devised a funnel made out of pvc in an effort to simplify filling the grease tank. It worked wonderfully and should cut out some of the elbow grease...ha ha! Tomorrow, the time has come to head south toward home. We will go slowly through Yellowstone and the Tetons and anything else that trips our trigger on the way. Our goal is to be back in Springfield by the 10th so we can attend our friends music festival, Lovefest. We look forward to seeing all our friends and family. And won't our little house seem big! Chances are fairly slim that I will be able to post on our way home. If you don't hear from me you can assume everything is going well. I look forward to taking the veggie bus to more towns and talking to more people. I am happy to report that our diesel tank, which we filled up 2 months ago before we left Springfield, is still half full (or half empty whichever you prefer). Point is, we have driven around 2,300 miles and only used a half a tank. Let's see if we can make it all the way back home with diesel to spare!

Boy, I just read over my last post...I must have been tired!
The hay is all up in big beautiful stacks! I am so glad we came out and took part in this method that is quickly becoming history. There is something special about being out there in the hayfield. Buckracks roaring everywhere, wheelrakes going round and round, people hollering and dust in your eyes. I have never spent so many days with grease from head to toe. We were all quite a sight by the end of each day. When I would feel frustrated I would look up and see the gorgeous mountains all around me and the wildflowers in every color at the edge of the fields. Sometimes, I would get a whiff of mint. One afternoon we got a whiff of smoke as one of the tractors caught on fire along with a sizable pile of hay and a buckrack. It was a scary moment as the realization crept in of how easily this whole field or more could burst into flames if the fire got even a little out of control. Luckily people thought quickly and the wind, which was gusting just moments before, stood still.
Now that it is all over, Ema was handed her first paycheck, which she took great pride in. She liked it so much she doesn't want to cash it yet, she just wants to be able to look at it for awhile. It has been nice being able to sleep in again, I think I'm getting spoiled! I defiantly miss having breakfast, lunch (or supper as they say around here), and dinner prepared for us. I didn't have to wash a dish or think of a meal for 3 weeks. And we had desert twice a day! Oh my! Someday I will be able to post some pictures of our haying experience.
We are still in the Big Hole for the moment. Chris decided to work a couple more days while Ema and I got the bus back in order and visited "Toots and Grandad" , my grandparents. I believe our plan is to (now don't hold me to it, it is always changing!) go crystal digging on Monday then Tuesday head north again for just a little longer. We are going to go to Garnet Ghost Town and then back to Missoula before we head out of Montana.
Before we left I figured we would either love this experience or get home sell the bus and chalk it up to experience. Now we are all 3 trying to figure out how to go south for the winter. I guess that speaks for itself. Even our daughter who, in case you don't know, is 8 years old, suggested we go home for a month or two and then go somewhere else. That really tickled me to hear that suggestion come out of her mouth without any coaxing from me. I am also enjoying seeing her embrace somewhat of an "unschooling" approach to home schooling. But that will be a post of its own someday.
By the way, the Missoulian did end up putting a little tidbit about the veggie bus in the Sunday paper a couple weeks ago. My cousin got bumped off her flight in Missoula and to help pass the time, bought a paper. I'm sure glad she did or we would have never known it was in there. Yesterday (Thursday) an article came out in The Eldon Advertiser which is the local paper from the town where I grew up. Here we are sitting in the same spot in the middle of nowhere and still getting press!

Hello everyone!!! I feel so far away out here without cell phone service! We are in Wisdom trying to get the hay put up. It has been wet though so it is not going as fast as everyone would like. The days do get long though so it is nice to have some half days even if it does slow us down. Chris is running the hoist that takes the hay up the beaverslide, I am on a wheelrake, and Ema is on a 4-wheeler. We spend a lot of time being very dirty! Greasy, I mean, and other generally grimy things. One of the 3 restaurants in town is saving all their grease to pick up on our way out. On the way here we developed a small pin size hole in the heater hoses that goes to the heater core in one of the filtering barrels that is kept in the "garage" or "filtration station" portion of our bus. Therefore it began leaking water into the barrel. We added more water before we realized what was going on. This forced the grease, because the barrel was full, to spill out onto the floor. The mess didn't get to big before we caught it but that is just one more reason to NEVER USE OLD HEATER HOSES! I miss everyone! And I can't wait till we have cell phone service again! ---tiff