Thunder Bus

Here’s the white limousine that goes screaming down and coughing up the winding, curving Nantahala Gorge.

I spent the summer of 2018 as a raft guide at a company called Rolling Thunder, and this old bus took us to and from the river three times a day. People like to say that they used to be school busses before they were church busses, but we didn’t get them until after the prisons were finished with them. I can’t confirm any of that, but I do know that a lot of great memories were made on them.

My first time riding was when my family and I visited the previous summer. I remember being sooo excited and surrounded by so much positive energy. There were twenty people in our group and we looked incredibly goofy; we wore the bulky red customer PFDs, swimsuit bottoms (in a 48 degree river), and assorted buffs on our heads and necks. I sat next to my Uncle Jon, who was a guide there in the early 90s, and listened to the HILARIOUS (I thought at the time) bus speech while my uncle sat on his PFD with his little feet dangling. My Aunt Brooke (also a former guide) and I decided, importantly, which guides we thought were the cutest, and my eleven year old cousins were identifying rapids from the window.

It was such a great time I decided to go back and work there. As it turns out, a lot of work actually has to be done before the bus can start moving. The boats get aired up, hoisted in place, and tied down while nervous/excited customers are getting prepped with gear and speeches. By the time we actually get on the bus we were pretty tired. It ended up being a place to relax, eat snacks (because we frequently missed meals) and tell each other funny things that happened on previous trips.

On the Fourth of July, we even took the bus to town loaded up with boats, pizza, and friends to watch fireworks from the rooftop. An experience I won’t forget.

I have so many great memories on these busses from just one summer in the gorge. But these busses have been there much longer than I was. They were there when my aunts and uncles were there, and they’ll be there when my cousins go. They’ve been there so long that now the only things older are the drivers.

I painted this hoping to capture a little bit of the gorge, hoping that when people look at it, they remember all the fun they had when they went rafting. If you’ve never been, I hope you get a chance someday because it is pure and it is fun and you won’t regret it (if you listen to your guide, of course).