Bus Touring

            What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you see a great big charter bus cruising down the freeway? I don’t know about you, but I always assume it’s full of Germans or Japanese. It’s very rare to see a bus full of Americans, because we prefer to travel in our own vehicles. Have you ever toured on a bus, though? It definitely has its advantages and disadvantages; for example, you don’t have to deal with the stresses of driving, but you can’t stop at every single historical marker. It’s a great way to travel if you’re not in a hurry and you can sleep curled up in a ball on your assigned cushion.

This past weekend I was on one of two charter buses full of middle school students and a handful of adults. We were headed down to a music festival in California. The buses departed around midnight, and we were supposed to arrive at our destination twelve hours later. Because the bus drivers needed breaks every so often, after about three hours of driving we would pull into a gas station and everyone on the bus would unload. I always felt bad for the attendant on duty, but all of them that I spoke to said they were used to large groups of people flooding their stores in the middle of the night. Each time we returned to the bus, we would have to count off to ensure that everybody made it back. And then we were off into the dark desert night again. Imagine trying to sleep after a bunch of excited teenagers have returned from a convenience store with Red Bulls and sour gummy candies at 3:00 am.

We finally arrived in California, but our rooms at the hotel weren’t quite ready for us to check into, so we bounced over to Disneyland for a day of sluggish fun, since none of us had really gotten any sleep. The best thing about arriving in a bus at Disneyland was that we didn’t have to remember where we parked the car; the buses dropped us off and picked us up right next to the trams. Plus, it’s only $25 per bus as opposed to $15 per car. One car typically has four to six people in it, but the bus I was on had about thirty. Talk about getting the most for your money! Anyway, it really was nice to have a couple of buses shuttle us between the park and our hotel, even though the hotel was only about 20 minutes away by foot.

I’m not really sure if the bus company we had chartered for our trip specialized in long road trips to California. At one time, we exited the freeway in California, drove through the small town of Barstow, got back on the freeway, and continued on our journey, without stopping anywhere. The drivers were apparently confused about a meeting point where they were switching out drivers.

Another time we were leaving a gas station that we had stopped at for a break in Fillmore on our way home. Instead of heading towards the freeway on-ramp, the drivers took a frontage road. Now, the freeway exits in Southern and Central Utah are extremely far apart, and I couldn’t figure out why they were taking a frontage road to get to the next exit when there was an on-ramp right by the gas station. And then I realized that the sun was setting to my right, which meant that we were heading south, which was not the direction of Salt Lake City and home. After driving ten miles out of our way, because the drivers couldn’t just turn around on the narrow road we were on, we finally got back on the freeway. Ten minutes later we passed the same gas station that we had already stopped at. It was a bit disconcerting, but at least we made it home.

Even though you are at the mercy of your driver while on a bus tour, it is nice to cut out some common travel woes, such as not being able to stand up and stretch from time to time. Also, traveling with a bunch of school kids was fun, even if it was noisy all the time. There was always someone to talk to or play a game with to make the time pass much more quickly. And when you’re traveling twelve hours in one go, that’s a wonderful thing.