Finding HHHappiness

Upon waking up on the farm. We went for a nice morning walk after breakfast around the farm. We got to visit all the animals, meat goats, milk goats, haired sheep (no need for sheering) pigs and chickens.  (meat goats, keeping an eye on us as we pass by) (chickens that gave us some beautiful unwashed eggs. Unwashed eggs, do NOT need to be refrigerated. That's great for bus life) (the hogs, raised for the kielbasa and breakfast sausage we will enjoy over the coming days) After coffee/tea and our walk, then a nice morning chat with our host for the night. We hit the road once again. This time with sights set on a place to park and work at, for, hopefully 4 days. (mountains in the distance) As we traveled through a small town called Hiddenite, NC. We noticed a sign for an emerald mine. We decided to stop in and try our hand at rockhounding. Emerald hollow was the name of this mine. The fee was $20.⁰⁰ per person and the shovels and bucket...

We had a chilly night at the winery. Cold air makes for great sleep, but not so fun to escape the blankets in the morning.  (sunshine in the frosty grass of Golden Road Vineyard) Carmen woke up early, only to find the furnace had overheated at some point in the night. Shutting itself down for safety, making it quite cold while the outside temp was only 28°F. He quickly got it fired up again and the bus nice and toasty as he cooked a hearty breakfast for the two of us and sunshine. After breakfast we packed the breakables and strapped the drawers shut. Ready to explore the area on our way to the next destination.  We hit the road headed in a Western direction, sights set for Stone Mountain State Park, NC. This park is home to a waterfall unlike any waterfall I had seen before. This water fall doesn't actually fall, it slides. (Top of Falls at Stone Mountain SP ) The mountain is made of solid granite rock. Creating a slide for the water to cascade over ra...

After a relaxing couple days we continue our journey South and West along the blue ridge mountains into North Carolina.  (camp at North River Campground a hot fire on a cold evening) As we crossed a river in Buchanan, VA we spotted a most unique footbridge. This was unlike any other bridge we had seen before. A suspension bridge with cables drawn to a center tower and a couple of rather small steel beams to support the walking surface wood boards. The link below takes you to a short video of the bridge discribed above.  (info board about footbridge crossing James River) Buchanan Swinging Bridge (Swinging Bridge overview) (a view as you start across the footbridge) After our walk about the suspension footbridge we hammered down on some back country roads up and over the the blue ridge mountains and into the Mt Airy, NC area.  17 miles on Blue Ridge Parkway, VA (time lapse) Backcountry roads in My Airy, NC area We made plans t...

After leaving Pennsylvania we found a great little spot for the night at a scenic overlook off of state RT 48 in West Virginia. Opon pulling in we found lots of graffiti on the pavement. It wasn't anything impressive either, just highschool kid chicken scratch...I love so n so and so on. The graffiti was concerning that we may have to fend of some kids with spray paint trying to tag our rig in the middle of the night. Though that never happened and we got a wonderful night's rest. I've included a link to a short video below of the view walking off of the bus stairs in the morning. (Alice parked at the scenic overlook) (a view out the doors at the overlook) WV to VA time lapse We continue south in the morning after cleaning Alice's windshield to capture some time laps footage. Through West Virginia into Virginia. We had a cloudy semi rainy day of travel into Virginia. Along the route we stopped into Lost River State Park for a short hike and some ...

Well, it has been some time since we have made a post on here. To bring you up to speed we have 98% completed the bus build that we have named Alice. We are on all social media outlets as Alice_the_skoolie. We have more about the build and some detailed videos available on TikTok.  (Interior of Alice_the_skoolie) With Alice mostly complete making her very livable, we have given up our apartment. Living  in Alice full time for over two months now. We have officially left our home state of New York chasing the sun. We have many festivals of all kinds planned for the winter months. We hope you follow along for the journey.  (night time photo of our store Hammocks Hats and Happiness set up in front of Alice at a music festival in New York) We have found that many people who live in skoolies or RV's and travel alot tend to stay on the highways and sleep in Walmart parking lots everywhere they go. Now I do see the convinces in this, I must say I prefer o...

Carmens been working like crazy to get the bus stripped of anything that will not be used in the new Skoolie.   He started on the floor and quickly got distracted by the control panels which had dozens of switches that  we wouldn’t be using.   He carefully went through and removed all the unnecessary wires and switches and left only the basics.  This leaves us with a wide open cockpit that we can now design to fit our needs.   Once Carmen finished monkeying around with the wires he decided to tackle the side walls to see what the insulation and condition was underneath  After removing all the side walls we went back to the cockpit to work on some of the surface rust from the doghouse and front vent.   It wasn’t too bad, but it did need to be dealt with before we prime the floor.    The cockpit cleaned up quite nice! Moving on to removing the ceiling panels and air conditioning units. This part was a bit of a pain because we could only get abo...

The plates from Vermont have finally arrived!  Once we received them in Key West we boogied back to Homestead to slap ‘em on the bus and get moving!  We took the bus over to our favorite Hip Camp in the area and went to work on changing the tires and straightening the alignment.   To loosen the lug nuts in the tires Carmen purchased a  Torque Multiplier  from Amazon that made the job much easier without the need a large pneumatic impact wrench (which cost several hundred dollars) Once the tire was removed from the bus he needed to put our new tires on the rims.  For this job he purchased   GoPlus Tire Changing Tools  so he could do it himself.   We have a video in the works showing the whole process, so stay tuned for the final video on our YouTube page.  Once he got the old tire off he used the second tool in the pair to put the new tire on the rim.  Both the removal and installation were done very easily!  One tire down ...