Have you ever traveled by bus? When I tell people I have been traveling by bus they have such wild dramatic reactions like, “Why would you do that?” or “Just fly!” Flying is more expensive and I prefer to be on the ground. Yet there have been a few friends who kind of “get it,” they understand it is an adventure and reply, “That’s cool, I used to travel by bus,” or “You get an entirely different slice of life when traveling that way.” It does fuel a certain part of me for sure.

I was introduced to traveling by bus back in the early 1980s when you could buy a ticket for $100 and travel from Kenora, Ontario, Canada all the way to Alaska. It took a few days of travel with one overnight stay in Edmonton, Alberta and another in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. We “long-riders” would curl up in our seat, backs to the aisle pretending we were asleep, so those getting on would sit somewhere else. On a long ride like that with choppy sleep, a gal gets kinda ornery and small talk gets bothersome. I recall toward the end of one trip, somewhere on the Queen’s Highway between Winnipeg and Kenora an older man spoke sternly to me and asked, “Would you do me a favor, just comb your hair?” Well, geez, I just stared back rather offended and said nothing. I thought “when you have naturally independent hair and force it on a long bus ride, cosmetics go out the window!”

So now, decades later, I have started less-lengthy bus travel again because it works. My brother Paul lives in a small town in northwest Missouri, named Maryville. When he gets vacations from the college he teaches at, he enjoys traveling back north to Minnesota to see his sis and the crew. Last fall he came up and I decided I really wanted to ride back with him, spend time visiting, help him with eleven hours of driving and visit my sis-in-law back in Maryville. I parked my Jeep in Duluth at the Jefferson Bus Lines ramp where I would return a couple days later and drive back to Ely. Bus adventures were reinvented and the cost one way is about $120. I was just back down to Missouri again a few weeks ago with my brother.  When we left Ely it was minus-14 degrees. The next day we were all down in Kansas City for antique shopping, dinner and the opera, and it was seventy-five glorious degrees. What a treat to be in that balmy weather and away from the ice and snow.

When it was time to leave and head home to the cold north, I caught the bus in the small town of Bethany. The bus was rather full so I headed toward the back, past a real mix of folks, and found a seat. I felt out of my comfort zone, like I would have in Junior High School sitting with ruffians in the rear of the bus. I overheard there’d been a fight earlier that day that involved police intervention. Glad I missed that. I was traveling to Des Moines, then to Minneapolis, and ending in Duluth. At the next stop at a small roadside building called The Amish Store, I observed two black buggies with horses parked outside. Then, a mixed-age group of about seven Amish in black hats, bonnets, and long dresses exited the store to board the bus. I thought, “How cool is this!” We don’t have Amish up north. Several moved to the rear where I was sitting.  A burly, bearded man peered down at me and asked if he could sit in the empty seat next to me. I said, “yes,” as I condensed my backpack and all to accommodate him. He took off his hat which left his dark, thick hair form-fit to his head. He sat forward in his seat with his arms resting on the back of the empty seat in front of him. He remained in this position for about three hours. He spoke periodically with his wife and child in the seat across from us and a younger Amish man seated across the aisle and up a row from us. The language was a form of German, I thought. I was hoping he would talk to me, but he did not. Even dressed in a black blazer I was too formidable with my red cell phone and funky glasses.  When the bus stopped in a small town north of Des Moines, the man stood up to stretch and I made my announcement to him that I could move toward the front and switch seats with the older Amish grandmother who had been isolated away from the group. They all seemed pleased.

I was moving toward comfort, to the front of the bus where I belong, I eased into my new aisle seat next to a younger woman who was obviously pregnant. I stuffed my lumpy backpack under my legs. It was full of bubble-wrapped Missouri treasures and did not fit under the seat. I decided I’d over-done it with shopping and next time had to travel lighter. My new seat partner and I exchanged a brief greeting. She looked pale, drawn, like she wasn’t getting the proper nutrition. Her clothes looked as if she’d closed her eyes and grabbed them out of a bag, all mixed colors, pilled acrylic textures with nothing very appropriate for cooler temperatures. She wore no socks in her short black boots. She said she was very tired and wished she could just lie down on the floor and sleep. I gave her my coat to use as a pillow. She slept all the way to Minneapolis. The bus ride to the cities was delayed here and there. We waited outside a McDonald’s near Clear Lake too long for a man who’d jumped off but never returned. I ended up nearly missing my connection north from Minneapolis to Duluth. I quickly got off the bus to grab my luggage for the switch.

The new driver stopped me because I wasn’t following proper boarding protocol. I explained that I was rather new at this. He had the look and tone in his voice of…“What’s a nice girl like you doing on a bus like this?” He asked mewhy I was even riding the bus. Then the bus driver from my previous ride heard our exchange and hollered over, “Ya, you gotta really keep an eye on that one!” I felt like I was being treated with prejudice. I hadn’t done anything to be treated differently, was not dressed-up but gave off some kind of air of apparent royalty it seemed. I was then treated very nicely and escorted to the proper place of approach to my bus.

I had overheard the bus driver talking to the Amish group about their upcoming overnight layover in Minneapolis in order to catch the bus that would take them east to Eau Claire. They went and sat in the depot, and as I hurried past them from the restroom back to my bus I felt bad that their leader would not allow his family a stay in a hotel. Did he just plan poorly, I wondered. If I were his wife, I’d be complaining and wanting a hotel! It was not my situation and this is the way of bus travelers more often than not.

The ride from Minneapolis to Duluth is very quiet and makes no stops. I arrived in Duluth at 8:45 p.m. after about a fourteen-hour ride in total. When it’s all finished.... I generally think things like, “Gee that was a long ride,” or “Maybe I’m done with doing this.” But after a few months, when my brother comes to visit, I’ll most likely be ready to do a bus ride adventure again. 

Scarlet Stone can be reached at scarlet@frontiernet.net.