I am not a camper. At all. It traces back to my first and only weekend camping trip, the most memorable feature of which was a plague of ever-present gypsy moth caterpillars. Over the past couple years, however, I have seen a couple renovated school buses that have me seriously reconsidering my attitude toward venturing into the woods. The most appealing facts about these conversions: a used Bluebird or International school bus seems to cost less than $5,000 on eBay Motors and the cost of conversion does not seem to be prohibitive.

The first renovated school bus that I stumbled across was this beauty from Sean and Lindsey from the now-defunct WPI Creative. Given that the bus has received “187,438 likes, 42,264 shares, and 15,196 comments,” I am clearly not the only one who appreciated how the space was re-imagined. This view of the interior is amazing:

Just last month, the good folks at Inthralld posted a piece about another school bus conversion. Hank Butitta converted the bus into a small living space as part of his Master’s thesis (as a liberal arts guy, his thesis is so much more interesting than any of the papers that I ever wrote…). In reading the Inthralld piece and visiting Buttita’s site, two things jumped out at me: we are only talking about 225 square feet (making the 344 square foot Hong Kong apartment that I felt was “a little small” seem downright palatial) and how different of a vibe Buttita was able to achieve with his design. Compare the view looking back into Buttita’s bus from his Web site to the image above:

Buttita did all of this for about “$6000 in improvements” to a $3,000 school bus that he bought off of Craigslist. Pretty awesome.

As someone who has dreams of going to Burning Man lurking in the back of his head, the idea of staying in a dwelling like this is pretty appealing, especially if had an array of solar panels on the roof to take full advantage of the desert sun.