Bus Notes From All Over — "The Road Is A Song"

There are RV's and vans, motor homes and pickup trucks, camper tops and Fifth Wheels, tent dwellers and van dwellers, old school buses and ice cream trucks turned into homes on wheels—even a truck converted to a mobile home?—and more, all singing the songs and reciting the poems of the open motorized road. But the one that got it going, the Swiss Army knife of compact motorized live-in transportation is the venerable VW bus, now 60 years old.

Movie trailer

The news is that now there is a movie, The Bus, about the history, flavor and peculiar beatification of this American and global icon of peace, freedom and the open road,. After some years in production, and scraping together the funds to make it happen, The Bus opens February 23rd at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Missoula, Montana.

A click on the link above takes you to the movie website where you will find two short film takes. View both. Because there is a good chance you will never get to see the movie in a theater, still viewing them will convey a feel of what the bus, the spirit it evokes and the bus community are all about.

There is also a possible second bus movie, Circle the Wagens. The folks doing this low budget production are trying to raise $20,000 to turn a lot of raw footage into a finished film. Currently they are about 1/3 of the way there. This movie documents ..... well, check it out for yourself. Here is the link to the video.

Another VW bus site worth favoring is that of the The Full Moon Bus Club. With membership mostly in the mid-Atlantic (of the US), it was started in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1998, where many of its original members still bus and live. But today it is more than a regional bus club, Today the FMBC has 1270 members around the world, and membership is free. The club hosts 10 camping get togethers annually, beginning in February on the pristine island of Edisto Beach, SC,  and late into the fall.

There is one April not to miss if you can get there:  Everybus 2012. This year will be the 13th year that the gathering that attracts campers from as far away as Canada, Texas and Florida will be held at the comparatively small Hagan-Stone Park in Greensboro, NC, where as many as 170 buses have been known to squeeze in to the park, two or three to a single camp site. Here is the link to this Everybus 2012.

Buses jam the infield at Stone-Hagan Park during Everybus

What makes VW busing special?  The buses, their drivers and their passengers.

What other icon of the open road has such devoted followers, so many gatherings and a community that stretches around the globe?

To the best of my knowledge none.