Welcome to our family travel blog. or maybe it’s a family RV blog. or a roadschooling blog. or how ’bout a large family blog. Whatever you want to call it, it’s the story of our unusual, rather eclectic, ongoing journey…
Except that we happen to believe that there really isn’t anything unusual about us. We are just your average family of 14, who happen to live in an RV.
It was never really planned that we would live in less than 400 sq. ft., but it was by choice!
In 2009, our family of soon to be 13, sold our house with the intent that our builder dad/hubby, would put all of us to work building another house somewhere in the backwoods of Montana. We had built our last home in 2001, and learned then that landlords didn’t rent houses to families with 10 (soon to be 11) kids. After selling that house, when we didn’t find the perfect land right away, we threw our belongings into storage, packed the kids into our 30′ bunkhouse travel trailer, and headed west and south for a winter-long vacation. The plan was we’d come back in the spring and build our house then. After 2 weeks packed like sardines in our camping trailer, crabbing and clamming on the Oregon coast, we had a family pow-wow and decided that a house could wait until we were traveled-out. That was well over 5 years ago.
We now have a larger RV, and we are in more of a ‘living’ mode than a ‘honeymoon/vacation’ mode, but we are still not at the end of our OnTheRoad journey. We travel 6 to 8 months of the year, and then go back ‘home’ to Montana for the summer to work. Winters we put as many miles on as we can, seeing as much of God’s creation as we can, visiting as many National Parks as we can, collecting as many Jr. Ranger badges as we can (kinda history buffs). Summers we spend being camp hosts on a lake while Vaughn and the big boys run their construction business, we run two firework stands (2 week gig), and Eli and Beth sell their wares at the local Farmer’s Market every weekend; all while still living in our 40’+ toy hauler. We all work hard so that we can all play hard.
We are a conservative christian, home/roadschooling, homebirthing, family who has tossed the American Dream for the OurFamily Dream. Our dream of spending more time together experiencing life instead of maintaining possessions. We still have plenty of stuff, but it no longer has us.
We have had 2 kidlets since giving up our sticks-n-bricks, and we’ve had 3 that have grown and flown the nest that our tribe calls home (well, one keeps coming back for dinner every night tho – makes this momma happy ;). 11 of us travel, but it takes all 14 to make us complete. I blog mostly for my own enjoyment, and to keep the grown kids and gramma in the loop (well, and so I can get the dates right when I finally get around to scrapbooking all this craziness)!
But also, by sharing our life and travels, we hope to inspire others to live the life that they dream of – even if it doesn’t fit into everyone else’s expectations of normal. If we can pursue our dreams, and actually bring this crazy caravan to reality (and make it work for 5 years and counting!), then you could live whatever your dreams are too! So, whether you are dreaming of being on the road fulltime, love to check out National Parks with us, or just intrigued by a family of 11 in an RV (yeah, sometimes I’m not sure how it all works out either)… no matter the reason you are here, you are welcome to join us on our journey, wherever it may lead… 😀
Want to meet us a little more ‘in person’? You can check out a pitch reel that was made of us by Infield Fly Productions out of Canada at https://vimeo.com/41047458. It was made while our RV was in the shop, so we are in a (borrowed) house in it, but it’s us 😉
Want to get in touch with us?
Feel free to contact us regarding media and destination visit inquiries at TicknorTribe@msn.com. We enjoy working with locations, experiences, and products that fit in our niche of RVing and/or family travel!
If you are a reader who has questions or comments about our blog, that you don’t want to post publically, or just want to connect, we prefer communicating through facebook messaging over at The TicknorTribe!
