Living in the bus was always about far more than traveling. It would not be inaccurate to say that traveling was really a byproduct of living in the bus rather than the reason for it. A nice fringe benefit if you will. 

For me living in the bus was more about stepping outside, literally and figuratively. Stepping back as well, taking stock and critically evaluating the assumptions that had been handed to me about how to live. This very quickly became about living with less. When you have less than 160 square feet of livable space, everything becomes about doing more with less.

And that's what we wanted anyway, which is why the bus was always perfect. I wanted to step back and eliminate a lot of things and see if they actually mattered to me. It is one thing to sit around and wish you could get rid of things because they cost money or you think you might be able to get along without them.

It's another story entirely to actually do it. 

Living in the bus provided a way to experiment in doing without, but offset any loss with the adventure and excitement of travel and living on the road. 

We questioned everything. In doing so we learned all kids of things. Do we need a large living space? No. Provided we have a large outdoor space we don't really need anymore than place to sleep and get out of the weather fromm time to time. Did we really need tk? Nope. Do we really need air conditioning? No, but it can be really nice at times. How about Refridgeration? Nope, but again, nice for some things. The list here is very long, but you get the idea. We learned to live with much less.

I saw, and still see, that as the first step in a transition away from a life consuming. Okay, so we consume much less, that's good. That's a first step, but we can (and should) go much farther than that.

Another ancillary benefit (goal?) of traveling in the bus was getting to see all the various regions of the country. Well, we did not get to all of them, but we got to quite a few. We missed the PAcific Northwest, but wet and cloudy is no place for me. I already know that (I am saving the Pacific Northwest for a different adventure many many years down the road). There were unexpected things in exploring the United States. I would never have predicted that we'd enjoy the great lakes, parciularly the regio around lakes Superior and Michigan so much. You could probably argue we didn't experience winter and therefore have a very distorted view of the great lakes, but to me that's just not a factor. I spent three long winters in New England, I know what winter is like and I am fine with it.

That said,