My trip to Green Tortoise’s former “R&D” Facility in Lowell, OR. to shoot the Super Golden Eagle was a decade later than it should have been, as it’s been closed and most of the buses are gone, their regular Seattle-San Francisco route having shut down in 2001. But Green Tortoise Tours is still at it, offering an unconventional (and cheap) way to tour the most compelling sites of North America.
image: briancechony.com
Green Tortoise was founded in 1974, as an alternative bus service on a few key runs on the West Coast as well as extended tours, across the country on various routes, Alaska, Mexico, and all points between. Their current slogan is “Nothing Like Your Last Bus Ride”.
image: briancechony.com
The buses, which traditionally have been old GMC transit buses and coaches, were converted at the GT facility in Lowell so that there is a combination of sitting and lounging areas which are converted to sleeping accommodations. The GT generally travels at night, saving on overnight expenses. There are two drivers who work in shifts, and who also buy the food and organize communal meals. A former GT driver has a site that describes it all in greater detail at brioncechony.com. Not surprisingly, the prime demographic is young adults 18-34, the majority from Europe and other countries.
I’ve noticed the GT R&D facility, a former freight train depot, since shortly after arriving in Eugene, as it sits right on the way to one of our favorite hiking spots (Fall Creek). Why I’ve waited so long to finally walk in and look around is another matter, as this lot was once chock-full of old buses, both awaiting being converted as well as just for parts. Today, there’s just a handful of buses left, along with the Super Golden Eagle. I would have kicked myself if that had disappeared before I shot it.
Although Green Tortoise has moved on to more modern coaches in recent years, they favored old GMC transit buses for much of their forty years in business, and for good reason: they were cheap to come by, very ruggedly built, and parts were plentiful. Here’s two of the most common GT buses, used until not that long ago: an “Old-Look” and “New Look” GMC transit bus.
Here’s a look inside the older bus. Most of the furnishings are gone, but the overhead bunk beds are still in place.
The newer bus is in similar condition. I bet these buses have some colorful stories to tell.
A few remaining transmissions. I imagine keeping these old relics rolling was an interesting challenge for the GT mechanics. I wonder how often one broke down in the middle of nowhere.
Here’s a newer bus at the spit in Homer Alaska. Is the engine open to shed some warmth, or?
Meal time!
Keeping the vibes positive was perhaps a bigger challenge than keeping the old Jimmys running. Being in such intimate quarters with 25-30 other people for up to two weeks is no joke.
For Green Tortoise travelers, this slogan undoubtedly has more significance.
Related reading:
Somewhere along the line, I became too old to travel like that. I think it was when I bought a car. 🙂
I think it would be fun to take that kind of trip one time around the age of 21.
Today – not so much. I guess that’s a sign of advancing age.
The only thing I wonder is how many of those people tried to have sex in those bunkbeds, while all the others tried to not hear anything about it…
50%?
Summer of 1976, somewhere between Oklahoma City and Albuquerque on a Greyhound Americruiser…made it to 3rd base in the seats in the dark of the night. I’d had given 50 bucks for a bunk on a Green Tortoise that night…had I known. The lavatory in the Americruiser would have been a definite mood killer.
So why didn’t I hear about this when you arrived in SD? 🙂
When we got off the bus during the stop in Albuquerque we were met by a couple of cops in the bus station. they asked to see some ID. It turned out she was a 15 year old runaway headed for her sister’s place in Flagstaff. Now I was only 17 but traveling on an AmeriPass of a month. She was led away and I was left with odd sense of (Catholic?) guilt that I perhaps had done something wrong plus I couldn’t help her with her situation.
I decided not to let it get into my head and continued on to SD carefree. There were more adventures to come during my travels west to east after our time going up the CA coast.
Ah. Sounds like a not-too uncommon Greyhound experience from the 70s.
I left Boston in the summer of 1976 bound for San Francisco paying 50 bucks for a one way ticket to west coast. It was supposed to take about a week to make the trip. I vaguely remember it taking more than a week due to breakdowns and the police pulling us over a number of times. There was a commune in Arizona. Some of our bus mates decided to stay at the commune. I threw up in the Grand Canyon. My only trip to the Canyon. Crazy.
If only I was about 25 years younger.
yech. I’m sure it really starts to stink in there in about, oh, fifteen minutes.
and the thought of being packed in so closely with that many unfamiliar people makes my skin *crawl.*
no thanks.
I have a friend who lives 1/2 the year with his wife in a nicely converted Greyhound bus , it’s really nice inside and underneath too .
They travel the U.S. and Mexico .
Every time I find an old GM bus sitting I think about making it an RV…..
It could be fun but it’s _NOT_ cheap nor for the fainthearted .
-Nate
Somehow this reminds me of when we bought a house about 8 years ago. It had a sorta-finished attic room that I wanted to use for my Lionel trains. The previous owners had clearly used it as a smoke and sweat lodge. In describing my reaction to friends, I said, “Am-scray, Sixties, the Fifties are here.”
I say this with respect to Paul and the other (current and former) Star Children in my life. 🙂 I sympathize with free spirits, but I have admittedly bourgeois hang-ups about personal space and body odor.
I saw the German version last year – in America!
Had no clue WTF this was when I saw it, but it was interesting enough for me to run down the street chasing after it. I looked it up when I got home and apparently they’ve taken this concept one step further and actually put separate (and tiny) “hotel rooms” on a bus. You ride up front during the day and fingerblast the night away inside a little pod in the back. The people on this one are probably just taking their pills and suffering from sleep apnea, but that’s the reputation they have in Europe (per internet reviews). I’m not really sure what this one was doing here, a block from the South Street Seaport. The website didn’t say that they operated in North America. It had German and Alaskan plates, and the taillights are crudely modified W126 pieces. Would make the sickest RV conversion ever!
I’m somewhere between fascinated and horrified on both. I think I’d actually take the ride if the opportunity presented itself, though! Everything about the Green Tortoise is a weed innuendo… but surely they don’t actually let you smoke on them, do they?!
Here’s the only other shot I have – the company is called Rotel Tours and has been around since the 40s. If you search them on Google, they have much crazier looking buses (some with trailers) and you can see what the “rooms” look like:
I’m familiar with Rotel. I used to see their buses in Santa Monica at the beach back in the 70s. They go all over the world. Stephanie’s ultimate nightmare…..
LOL – I’d be fine with the claustrophobia and I’d probably sleep really well (as I always do in moving vehicles). I’m not in love with smelling farts and hearing people boning, but I could tolerate it. What I couldn’t deal with is the potential of getting stuck with even one person that I reaaaaallly hated or having people fight over “stolen” flip-flops, socks, etc. ad nauseum – cuz you know that has to happen every single time. I’d never go on a cruise for similar reasons.
They actually ship the buses between continents? People who go on these trips must really love it, because that has to be insanely expensive compared to just flying over and taking a bus tour in the U.S. (with regular hotels and everything).
Good question. I have to assume that Rotel had/has a number of buses on the various continents, but they had German plates. Shipping them regularly wouldn’t work out. The whole idea was to make these tours cheaper.
Do they still offer the sleeping bunks on a moving bus? Geez, if they had an accident anyone in those bunks would be a goner unless they have some sort of seat belt arrangement?
Highway buses have an incredibly low accident rate. Probably safer than sleeping in your bed at home 🙂
I went on a Green Tortoise bus tour 6 years ago.
I was a school bus driver at the time. (Free advice from somebody who has been there, school bus driving is a god-awful job.) I had been driving a school bus for a year and I knew I could not do it much longer. I had heard of Green Tortoise and I called and asked them about applying for a job. They were very excited to talk to me once I told them I was a licensed and experienced bus driver. They asked me if I had ever been on a GT tour, I said no. They said that they recommended I go along with them on a tour and see if the job looked like something I would be interested in doing. The next tour was from San Francisco to Death Valley, and it was a week long trip. All I had to do was, A) pay them $100 to cover the food I would be eating on the tour, and B) drive myself down to Oakland, where their headquarters is located, so I could meet the boss and go on a short checkride with him so that he could see that yes, I really could drive a bus. (I live in OR.) I said yes to what sounded like a fun, almost free, vacation. Well it was an education, that is for sure. I was 51 years old at the time and I was the oldest person on the bus.
The two guys who were in charge of the tour worked like dogs. I did the math and I think they were making the equivalent of minimum wage, maybe.
It was very strange being on a bus with something like 35 total strangers. Some of the people were nice, some were OK, and some were the kind of folks that I try to stay very far away from as much as possible. (Not so easy on a bus trip.)
The bus did not have a bathroom on board, so if a person had to get up in the middle of the night when we were parked at a campground to use the can he was in for a challenge in just trying to get out of the bus. (And just as big of a challenge trying to get back in.) There was only one door and it was up at the front end of the bus. There were a lot of sleeping people between me and that door. Luckily I did not have to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, but I sure thought about what would be involved if I did have to make that trip.
There are no seat belts anywhere on the bus, except for the drivers seat. So if the bus got in an accident it would not be a pretty sight.
I found a great place to sleep under one of the tables. I started out sleeping up in one of the upper bunks just under the roof, but I very quickly realized that the bus was swaying as it went down the road and I would feel like I was on a boat if I tried to go to sleep up there. So I was happy on the floor, under my table, where nobody could step on me.
The food was good, we got to bathe every 2-3 days, and it was mostly a fun trip. I stayed busy helping out the 2 drivers as much as I could with the cooking and setting up the camp each night, but I realized about half way through the trip that being a GT bus driver was not for me, so I just enjoyed the trip from that point on as another experience to tell my friends about later. (And yes, I consider you, my fellow CC readers as my friends.)
Death Valley is a beautiful place. I have been there twice. I would go there again in a heartbeat. But not in the Summer, and not in a bus.
GT has another bus graveyard in Oakland. There must have been almost a dozen dead buses parked in a vacant lot near the bus barn.
I did learn that if a person wanted to go to Burning Man, and they did not want to spend the money required to rent an RV, then GT is the way to go.
Live and Learn is the motto I try to live by. You don’t know unless you try, so I gave GT a try. I am sure that GT is a great way to go for some people, but as some other folks have already posted, as I get older I find myself less and less willing to rough it.
PS, Nobody had sex on the bus on my trip.
Ray, thanks for sharing that. Interesting; it is about what I would have expected it to be like, more or less. Sounds like a job for a young guy.
Maybe you were sleeping too well to hear all the sex? 🙂
I did the Seattle to SF run in 1984. It was a hoot. And yes, I drank, smoked dope and even kind of had sex. Vegetarian meals, and a stop at a nude buddhist hot springs.
One lowlight: literally barefoot and pregnant girl in a white dress got on in Eugene, Oregon late at night and bartered a 5 gallon tub of raw cashews for fare to San Francisco. She settled down in the back with a bottle of vodka and set to partying. I can’t help but wonder where she and the kid (who would now be thirty) wound up.
Wouldn’t do it again, but it was an experience I wouldn’t give up.
I just can’t get behind the concept…..was this for those who thought that 25 year old Greyhound Americruiser was just to upscale and luxurious? Seats? Bathrooms? Personal space…..what am I? The Pope? Nah….I want to lay out with other shirtless strangers in a cramped space. Maybe it was aimed at people who wanted the authentic “traveling with dirty hippie killers on a bus” experience, but were to young to actually have done it.
Why am I not surprised? 🙂
BTW, GT is still very much around and doing bus tours. Different strokes….
I’m with you, there was never a point in my life(and I’m in my mid twenties) where I’d ever see this experience as anything less than hellish. A regular bus ride is bad enough! 😛
By “nothing like your last bus ride”, do they mean it’s nothing like the last bus ride you took, or do they mean “there’s nothing like your last bus ride on Green Tortoise”, as in, you’ll never want to ride a bus again?
Eh, like Kesey said, you’re either on the bus or off the bus.
(The last bus I was on was one of Harold LeMay’s old London double-deckers at the last-Saturday-in-August car show. Which is on the 31st this year….)
The nearest I got to this kind of hell was travelling on the Vienna to London Eurolines coach. There were two varieties: the Bratislava-Vienna-Brussels-London line (slow at 22 hours) and the Budapest-Vienna-Graz-Brussels-London line (f”§/n slow at 24 hours), but your ticket was open for 6 months and whenever you wanted to return you just called them and usually they had a free seat. Great when I was a student as I used to restore cars in Austria during my break to finance studies in the UK, but it was no fun and I usually got to sit next to a low ranking Russian mafioso or some unwashed, old hippy woman (as opposed to those nice Slovak and Hungarian au-pairs). One had to assume crashing out on arrival for a day but that did not matter if your stay was for two months… Coaches themselves were quite new and air-conditioned but seating for that amount of time is not good for you. The things we do when we’re young.
…oh, and that was the first time I saw an on-the-role driver change.
I TOOK ONE OF THESE PHOTOS!!!!! This is one of those surreal moments when I’m looking up things on the internet and find… myself?
This has been very fun to read…. from all your inside perspectives. How many people can comfortably ride the GT? I mean, how many seats and how many beds.
I have been dreaming of a tour on this bus for many years. I still think it would be fun for a bunch of folks I knew! and my age’ish (72). I love adventures! I saw a GT bus once at the Oregon Country Fair. (about 30 yrs ago- camping). I fell in love with it, but could not afford it. I still remember the cool Labyrinth made from braided tall grass at the Fair. 😉 I loved the Fair. So, I’ve studied and collected over 30 books about yurts and planned to live in one, “one day”. That phase last 10-20 years! when I finally let go of all those books, and as many if not more gardening and permaculture books, and alternative homes to build, I said goodbye to those dreams. Now, I am into tiny homes! 😉 Not yet, but still dreaming.
My original purpose that lead me to this site was to explore the possibility of finding a used GT bus that still works. I’m exploring different bus options as a potential temporary winter housing situation for the homeless where I live. I figured that the body heat of people alone would heat the entire bus, while they slept in beds or reclining seats (off the cold ground or floor). Not all homeless people even WANT to move or live inside. I don’t know how many we have either as they hide out in the plentiful woods we have. Does anybody have any creative ideas?
The Pacific Northwest is getting more and more snow, for longer and longer periods of time during Jan and Feb!
This is my personal ministry. I boiled a couple dozen eggs to take to the Community Meals program tonight. The vegetarians will like the protein for their salads if the meal has meat in it. I’m so proud of our community volunteers who bring meals in. The program is 5 dinners a week!
I wish I had a photo to share. God bless us all, for sharing our work, play, and spiritual journeys. .. my heart sings!
I rode the GT sometime in the late 80s Seattle to SanFran. I was in my 20s and riding solo, It seemed I was the only one by myself and the assorted clans were not very welcoming to the point of down right hostile, I have traveled all over the world and typically get along well with strangers, but not with this group. To really put the icing on the cake after arriving in SanFran I discovered a number of personal items had been stolen from my backpack, all in all a bad experience. On a side note, some long forgotten, casual, and slightly unsavory “acquaintances” I had had in Eugene, one of their favorite pastimes was lurking about the location the Green Tortoise takes it’s naked swim break and perving on the female (and possibly male) bathers.