We are the Halls: Kyle, Katie, Sidney, and Richard. We are a small family from Western Washington who started our adventure of being a full-time RV family in September 2021. Something that sets us apart from most of the other full-time traveling RV families we’ve found, is traveling with a child with complex medical and developmental needs.
Here’s a little of our history and how we got to this point:
Katie and Kyle met online in 2014 and after a short courtship got married in March of 2015 in Auburn, Washington. Kyle grew up camping and Katie didn’t really camp regularly until meeting Kyle. Our first son, Sidney, was born October 2016. For Sidney’s first couple years we had part-time nannies. With our next baby on the way, we decided to welcome our first Au Pair, Rachel from Brazil, into our home right after Christmas 2018. Rachel was a blessing to our family especially with our surprises with when Richard was born, in February 2019.
Richard was unexpectedly born 5 weeks early with a rare form of Esophageal Atresia (stomach not connected to esophagus/throat). About 2 hours after he was born, Kyle and Richard were in an ambulance heading to Seattle Children’s Hospital, about 40 minutes from our home without traffic. One week later, we found out that Richard also has Trisomy 21 (Down Syndrome). Rachel was a lifesaver supporting us during Richard’s 7 month stay in the hospital, as well as Kyle’s parents. When Richard came home from the hospital, we had to quickly learn our new normal with a special needs son: lots of medications, feeding tubes, medical supplies, therapies, medical appointments, hospital visits, learning medical lingo/language, and lots and lots of laundry. Rachel was a quick learner but her year with us quickly came to an end.
In December 2019 we welcomed our next Au Pair, Karol, also from Brazil, into our home. We had just finished a family vacation and celebrated Richard’s 1st birthday in February when the world shut down due to Covid-19. Having a special needs and medically complex child changed our outlook on what we felt we could and could not do, for the health and safety of our children. Thankfully, Katie works in a remote healthcare job, we already had childcare with Karol, and Kyle had already decided to go back to school, which was now remote. So unlike many, many people around the world, our small slice of the world didn’t change much. We are so grateful for the help and gracious understanding of Karol, as we just couldn’t risk any one of us being exposed to Covid and possibly infecting the family, especially Richard, who would likely end up in the ICU if infected due to his compromised immune system and airway challenges. Karol, having a medically complex family member, completely understood and agreed to hunker down with us. Fast forward – We went tent camping on the Washington coast in August 2020, which was our first time camping with Richard. Kyle is a veteran ultra-light camper and has been able to pack five people’s gear into a small pickup bed. Adding Richard and his supplies/equipment, caused us to rent a large U-Haul trailer, and we brought more stuff for him then everyone else combined. Plus, the set-up/tear-down time when from just under 60 minutes to over 4.5 hours.
Coming home from that camping trip, Katie proposed the idea of looking at a campers and RVs to allow for more camping opportunities with less hassle of all the stuff packed into a cramped truck and having to rent a cargo trailer every time we want to go camping. The next weekend we looked at and bought our first travel trailer- a 29-foot 2021 Keystone Bullet 243BHSWE. Since it was a bunkhouse, we had room for the boys and an au pair, but it wasn’t too large. We really enjoyed our travel trailer and we love camping. December 2020, Karol’s year with us ended and she returned to Brazil. We had every intention of continuing with the au pair program and had even matched with our next au pair. But the travel ban for people entering the USA would delay our next au pair’s arrival to June or July, 6-7 months later than when we originally expected her. We needed childcare and couldn’t afford a nanny, so Kyle decided to stay home with the boys and not continue with school while Katie continued to work remotely. Since we were no longer in the au pair program, we started talking about what it could look like to become a full-time RV family. We really weighed the pros and cons, expenses and savings. We wondered if we could even do it with Richard’s complexity. Due to Covid, we were already having virtual appointments for Richard, including his twice a week therapy appointments, and while Richard is still having somewhat regular in-person appointments and procedures at Seattle Children’s Hospital, we could stay more local in and around Washington for a little while. Plus the RV lifestyle would allow us more flexibility and we learned that Seattle Children’s has RV parking onsite, should Richard be hospitalized for a length of time.
Winter of 2020-21 we made the big decision to become a full-time traveling RV family. We spent countless hours researching RVs to find what we thought was the perfect rig to meet our needs. We started downsizing our belongings and trying to keep only the essentials and very sentimental items, but towards the end it was a mad-dash to clear out of the house so we were packing/selling/giving away everything. In May 2021 we ordered our new 5th Wheel and Truck, and our house went on the market. In June, we sold our house, spent the next 3-4 months living out of our 29ft travel trailer behind Kyle’s parent’s house. We are so thankful to Kyle’s parents for allowing us to invade their space and the boys loved the extra time with their grandparents. On September 4 2021, we got our brand-new 42ft Columbus River Ranch 392MB 5th wheel. We moved to Cedar Glen RV Park in Poulsbo, WA to start moving and settling in. The new 1-ton Ram crew cab long bed dually we ordered arrived in November 2021.
We are blessed that Katie works remotely and can work from the RV while Kyle homeschools the boys.
Our Original Plan:
We started out circling Western Washington with plans to expand to Eastern Washington and work our way up and down the Oregon Coast.
As our adventure continues, we will be updated our plans here.
We do have a mail service so we can continue to get mail- more info here if you would like to contact us.