MANATEE COUNTY, Fla. — A retired Manatee County school bus found a new home thousands of miles from the Tampa Bay area.
“We don’t have yellow school buses over here, but they are iconic, and they’re in all the films we watch. Of course, everyone knows them,” said Guy Wimpory. “That’s a big attraction, that kind of element of surprise and the quirkiness.”
Ruth and Guy Wimpory are the owners of Skoolie Stays, a bus transformed into a glamping experience. All the way in west Sussex, they said it took about three weeks to ship and about four months to renovate, with all the fixings to make someone feel right at home.
The vacation rental sleeps four people, has a full kitchen, a bathroom, and a log stove.
“Once you’re inside, you can forget you’re in a bus really,” said Guy.
The bus traveled a long way to get that new lease on life.
“We just knew it had come from Florida, but we just found some clues while we were kind of renovating the bus: some bus tickets, and then on the side of the bus, it had been painted over, but we could see it said Manatee,” said Ruth. “So we just got in touch with the Manatee district and said we think we’ve got one of your buses.”
It turned out Skoolie Stays was formerly known as Manatee County school bus #25. The school district said the bus, which was sold at auction in 2020, once drove kids from the former Orange Ridge-Bullock Elementary School to their home and vice versa.
The district showed its transportation employees the unique rental and much to their surprise that the bus found a new home and purpose in retirement across the pond.
“I remember this bus. I have worked on this bus, been in it. Oh my gosh,” said Mike Vickers, the lead mechanic for Manatee Schools.
