{"id":8475,"date":"2025-09-06T12:01:54","date_gmt":"2025-09-06T17:01:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/?p=8475"},"modified":"2025-09-06T12:01:55","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T17:01:55","slug":"magic-bus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/?p=8475","title":{"rendered":"Magic Bus"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This photo is probably twenty years “in the making”, as they say. I first heard about this bus – at the time, I didn’t know if it was a bus, a van, or a truck – many years ago. A friend told me its story: In the late 1960s, around the time I was born, my friend was a young boy working at his uncle’s concession stand aside a rural North Dakota lake. He saw some hippies driving around the other side of the lake in a bus they’d converted into a rudimentary camper. The bus stalled, and they tinkered with it for quite some time before abandoning it forever. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bus has since occupied that field, not very far from Bismarck-Mandan, for over half a decade. I knew I had to investigate. My friend has since purchased a significant portion of the land surrounding that lake, so he told me how to hike out to the area on his private land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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First off: while the skies were sunny at my arrival, a nasty storm system soon began brewing to the east. I’m delighted about this, because I love the dramatic skies. This gave me time to check out the bus with not one, but two drones before deciding to hike three quarters of a mile in tall grass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Whatever metal this thing is made of, it’s held up great over the past 55+ years. Sadly, it’s not unlikely to ever be restored or repaired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Not much of an engine here. Whatever ailed it, the hippies never figured it out. These days some YouTuber would probably want to LS-swap it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Hey, keep your feet behind the white line, buddy! I bet this bus was a blast to drive when it ran. There’s something adventurous about just roaming the country in whatever you’ve got, a sensation romanticized in many 1970s songs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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At one time there was a sort of camper conversion thing going on here. It had a stove and a sink, and I’m not sure what else. The interior hasn’t fared as well as the exterior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Nothing like a full sized stove to make your magic bus complete! I bet it made one heck of a heater, too, if the occupants ever wintered in this thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It looks like a primitive chimney was simply routed out the side of the truck, not all that different from some of the sketchy stuff you’d expect at a pipeline protest or that sort of thing. Lefties never change…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I’m not sure what the thought process was here. Perhaps there was a plan for plumbing, but I didn’t inspect it closely. The sky had its own waterworks on the way, and I was a long hike away from my vehicle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Nope, that’s not a bathtub next to the bus. It’s the remains of an old refrigerator. I’m not sure what the wood behind the bus was for, and I suspect it’s not even from the bus at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I was hoping the bus would have some sort of labeling which would give a clue as to its make, model, or even which bus line originally utilized it. Sadly, none exist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I do suspect, however, that this was bus number 415 somewhere…I just wish I knew where. Thankfully, there are places online for people who geek out on antique buses, so I will likely consult them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I’m glad I had the chance to finally, after all these years, come out to see this relic for myself. I actually thought it was some kind of van or box truck, but when I spotted this bus I was delighted to have found such an interesting relic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Suddenly I realized it was time to say goodbye – the storm was approaching more quickly than I’d anticipated. I had a lot of expensive camera equipment, including a drone, with me, and I didn’t want to get it doused. That’s when another wrinkle presented itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As it turns out, this bus sits on a sliver of land not<\/em> owned by my friend. He bought tons of land in the area in pieces over time, so I didn’t think anything of the fence fifty feet on the near side of the bus. I was corrected when the owner of that sliver of land came out to greet me and explain that I was no longer on my friend’s land. Oops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I explained the situation and apologized for my misunderstanding, and they were cool about it. They gave me a ride back to where my vehicle was parked, and I stowed my gear in the back of my vehicle just as the rain started. And it rained hard<\/em><\/strong> shortly after I departed, so I’m thankful for the lift. I didn’t ask for permission to return to their property, so I doubt I’ll ever visit this bus again. But I’m satisfied with the photos I captured that day as well as the story, so now it’s time to chase something else I’ve been eyeing for twenty years. I’m pretty sure I can come up with something. Stay tuned!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This photo is probably twenty years “in the making”, as they say. I first heard about this bus – at the time, I didn’t know if it was a bus, a van, or a truck – many years ago. A … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8458,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-vehicles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8475"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8480,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8475\/revisions\/8480"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}