Le Bus: A “True Pioneer Experience” It was July 2010. I was 13 years old, and found myself in a church parking lot at 3:30 in the morning with a few dozen other teenagers….. all dressed as pioneers. After our obligatory group prayer in the middle of the night, we stuffed our bags into the underside of the charter bus and started driving to Martin’s Cove in Wyoming for four days of trek. I remember chuckling with a few other young women about the massive “Le Bus” name on the side of our bus in huge font. We tried saying it in our finest French accents. Along with the bus, a few of the adults had trucks with the big supplies including the tents and the food. This detail is going to matter in about three minutes. As soon as we started driving, I took off my shoes, threw my pioneer bonnet over my face, and went back to sleep. Three or four hours into our drive, we stopped in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere Wyoming. Apparently there was a problem with one of the bus’s tires. They called a mechanic. He fixed it. We kept driving. About thirty minutes later? Another flat tire. We turned around, drove painfully slow on the side of the road back to the tiny town, got it fixed again, and got back on the road… yet again. The added wait time meant it was now midday, sun fully overhead, in the middle of July, in the desert. We drove for another hour when suddenly something wasn't right. There was a loud banging sound. The bus started swaying from side to side at full speed on the highway. Our driver managed to pull over as I heard from the back of the