Our Epic Family Gap Year Begins
What if you could press pause—not just for a weekend or a summer vacation—but for a whole year?
No commutes, no school drop-offs, no squeezing in family time between meetings, sports practices, and calendars full of events. Just the open road, a map full of possibilities, and the kind of quality time you can’t put a price on.
That’s the dream we’re chasing this year.
Starting mid-July 2025, we’re packing up our lives in Austin, Texas, hitching up our Airstream Travel Trailer (Stella!), and heading out for a year of full-time RV living and adventuring across North America. We will also go international and travel Vietnam for 8-weeks (no, we will not be taking our trailer across the ocean).
It’s part U.S. road trip, part international trip, part reset, part radical reimagining of how we want to live, grow, and connect as a family.
This will be our Family Gap Year!
What is a Family Gap Year?
You know how college kids take a year of freedom or travel before starting the grind of real life? Or how professors take sabbaticals to rest and recharge? Well… we’re doing the family version of that.
One year of traveling full-time, taking a year off work, homeschooling (or “roadschooling” and “worldschooling”) our kids, and really seeing and experiencing the world beyond our front door.
No two family gap years look exactly alike—and that’s part of the beauty. While most share a few core ingredients (time away from the daily grind, skipping the usual routine, and a focus on family and connection), the ways you design your year can vary wildly.
You might spend your whole year abroad in multiple countries, or you might be exploring stateside in an RV. For some, it’s doing a house swap with another family and settling into a different pace in one location.
You might work remotely, part-time, or not work at all during that year.
There might be a goal—like picking up a new skill as a family, hitting all the U.S. national parks, or volunteering as a family and learning from different communities. But then again, there doesn’t have to be any set purpose. Sometimes the real journey is figuring it out as you go.
Our family gap year won’t look like everyone else’s journey, and that’s exactly the point.
Big Questions To Tackle
Why are we doing this now?
What about school?
Where will we be traveling to?
How do we make this lifestyle financially sustainable?
What do we do with the house?
What about school?
What about community?
Why Now?
Our boys are 9 and 11. It’s a wonderful time to enjoy our kids while we’re still their favorite people!
We’re in agreement that pre-high school years is a sweet spot. They are old enough to absorb new experiences and remember this trip for the rest of their lives, and young enough to still want to snuggle in bed, or lay down and read a book together.
We know these golden years won’t last forever.
We know if we wait until they get to high school or college, their focus shifts—and rightfully so. They’re going to have more of their own lives by then.
We also know that life won’t hand us this opportunity again unless we make it. So we are.
And after years of planning, dreaming, and delaying… it finally feels like the time is right. Time to live the kind of adventure we always said we’d do “someday.”
How Can We Afford This?
Let’s address the question everyone’s quietly wondering: How are you pulling this off financially?
The short answer: We’re not retired. We’re not trust fund kids.
We are choosing to buy time—spend down some of our savings and investments now, while it still feels like the right season for it.
We’ve estimated what it would cost us. This includes campground stays, fuel, food, activities, online education programs, healthcare, Starlink internet, RV maintenance, and everything in between. It won’t be cheap—but it’s also not more than what we’d spend living in Austin, TX when you consider extracurriculars, school, vacations, eating out, monthly memberships, and the high cost of “regular life.”
We’ll also be renting out our primary home while we travel (as appose to selling it). Something that we’ve done previously for weeks at a time. That income will cover our mortgage, property taxes, home insurance and even provide a little extra to offset monthly travel costs.
This is a conscious decision to invest in time and experience—knowing our nest egg will be smaller down the road, but confident that what we gain will be worth every penny. Worse case, we just pick a favorite and send only one kid to college. Just kidding!
What We Hope to Get From This?
If we were to boil it down to four main points they would be—adventure, connection, growth, and perspective.
Adventure is more than just seeing new places—it’s about saying “yes” to the unknown. It’s hiking trails we’ve never set foot on, doing hard things like downhill MTB as a family, learning how to back up the trailer in a tight spot without yelling (too much), or watching our kids get curious about constellations they’ve never seen.
It’s the serendipity of meeting another roadschooling family who feels like instant friends. It’s letting go of the itinerary when the weather changes, and embracing whatever unfolds. It’s doing things we’ve never done before—and maybe didn’t think we could.
We want our kids to see that life can look many different ways—that not everyone lives on a cul-de-sac with a whiteboard calendar packed with events. It is a chance to be less rushing, more being. That there are different ways to be happy, to work, to rest, to be creative, to find purpose, to connect, and to grow.
We want our boys to understand that education doesn’t only happen in a classroom. That joy doesn’t always come from stuff. That happiness can be found in a quiet trail, a new friendship, or a hard-earned hike view. That adapting to new challenges and being uncomfortable can be fearful. That fear is a companion to growth, not a warning sign to stop.
One day, when they’re off living their own adventures, we hope they’ll look back on this year and remember it as one of the best chapters we wrote together.
We also want us, the parents, to remember who we are outside of careers and responsibilities—to rediscover what makes us curious, what fills our tanks, and what kind of life we want next.
Our Travel Plans
Now for the fun part. We’re heading West! We’ve broken our U.S. RV trip into two parts.
RV’ing Part One—152 nights, 10,000 miles | Mid-July 2025 to Mid-December 2025
We’ll kick things off from Austin, heading to Littleton, Colorado to visit friends before diving into the mountain magic of Crested Butte, Ouray, and Telluride in the state’s stunning southwest. From there, we’ll head north to Rocky Mountain National Park, then make our way to Glacier in Montana, followed by Banff, Whistler, and Vancouver up in Canada.
Next, it’s back to the U.S. for coastal adventures—exploring Olympic National Park, Seattle, and Portland before cruising down the iconic California coastline through the Redwoods, San Francisco, Big Sur, San Diego, and the extremes of Death Valley.
We’ll close out Part One with a desert finale in Arizona, soaking up Sedona’s red rocks, the cacti of Saguaro National Park, and Tucson’s warmth before circling back to Austin to gear up for Vietnam.
Part one is 90% mapped out with many campgrounds booked. We’ll be visiting/staying at 8 National Parks! Below is our more detailed break down of where we’ll be and when.
Colorado | Mid Jul – Aug 03
Denver/Littleton, Crested Butte, Ouray, Telluride, Rocky Mountain National Park
Montana | Aug 09 – Aug 13
Glacier National Park
Alberta | Aug 17 – Aug 23
Banff National Park
British Columbia | Aug 23 – Sep 09
Whistler & Vancouver, BC
Washington State | Sep 10 – Sep 23
Olympic National Park, Seattle, Mt Rainier National Park
Oregon | Sep 26 – Oct 03
Portland, Yachats
California | Oct 07 – Nov 25
Redwood NP, San Francisco, Hillsborough, Big Sur, Pinnacles National Park, Pismo, Ventura, Mission Viejo, San Diego, Palm Springs, Joshua Tree NP, Death Valley National Park
Arizona | Nov 25 – Dec 09
Valley of Fire SP, Nevada
Sedona, Tucson, Saguaro National Park
RV’ing Part 2—167 Nights, 8,000 miles | March 2026 to Mid-August 2026
This stretch is still taking shape, nothing booked yet, but the general route is set.
We’ll launch Part Two with a desert-meets-canyon route—Page, AZ and the Grand Canyon—before diving into Utah’s “Mighty Five”: Zion, Bryce, Arches, and more. A possible Vegas detour (because, why not?) precedes our slow trek up California’s east side: Sequoia, Mammoth Lakes, Yosemite, and Crater Lake.
From there, it’s Idaho bound! We’ll wind through Yellowstone and Grand Teton before landing somewhere quieter for the final stretch—spending extended time in either Idaho, Montana, Utah, or Colorado mountains to soak in the slower pace of mid to late summer.
I counted 13 National Parks that we are planning to visit/camp!
Vietnam — 8 Weeks | Winter 2025–2026
This leg isn’t fully planned yet but we plan to tour Vietnam from top to bottom—starting in the north with Hanoi and Ha Long Bay, moving through the central gems of Da Nang and Hoi An, down the coast to Nha Trang, and finishing in the south with Ho Chi Minh City, Da Lat, and Can Tho where the Mekong River empties into the South China Sea.
Both Thao and I were born in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) in the 1980s. I left before I was two; Thao left when she was eight. This will be our boys’ first time experiencing Vietnam, and we’re excited to rediscover the country through their eyes.
We’ll also top off the international travel with a Lunar New Year celebration in Vietnam, which will be Tuesday, Feb 17.
What Might a Typical Day Look Like?
This isn’t a vacation. It’s a reimagining of how we live when we’re no longer tethered to a fixed address—whether that’s home, school, or office.
We’ll still have routines—they’ll just look a little different.
We’ll still cook meals, knock out schoolwork, work on creative projects, and manage our investments. But instead of being surrounded by the same four walls, we’ll be waking up somewhere new every 3-7 days—with a fresh backyard, new neighbors, and endless possibilities just outside our door.
Instead of cleaning a 2,051-square-foot house, we’ll be tidying up 200 square feet on wheels. (It still gets messy. Just faster.)
A “typical” day might look like this:
- Wake up slow—snuggle time in bed
- Morning work session—the boys dive into 2 hours of core subjects after breakfast (math, reading, language arts), while Thao and I catch up on investments, write, do pilates, or prep lunch
- Afternoon adventure—hiking through a national park, visiting a local museum, biking a new mountain, or exploring a quirky small town
- Evening reset—the kids play outside (sometimes with new campground friends), we cook dinner, and we all eat around a campfire
And while we will have structure, we’ll also have flexibility.
Maybe we front-load the week—power through Beast Academy, Lexia, and IXL on Monday through Wednesday—and then leave the laptops closed the rest of the week. Maybe we do journaling on a mountaintop and reading in a hammock. It all depends on where we are and what the day calls for.
Our kids attend an Acton Academy, where learning happens through real-world projects that build 21st-century skills. These projects—called Quests—typically last four to six weeks and are structured around a compelling narrative. Each Quest weaves together challenges that foster skills like collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity, while also incorporating subjects like science, history, and social studies.
We’re excited to create our own mini versions of these Quests on the road—tailored to the places we visit and the experiences we share as a family.
Community and Connection
If you asked us, “What’s the hardest part about taking a family gap year?”—our answer would be simple: community.
Being away from the people we love—family, friends, and our kids’ best buddies—is the toughest trade-off. Our boys have friendships they treasure, and so do we. Leaving behind that daily connection is no small thing.
But while one door temporarily closes, others are waiting to open.
We’re planning to meet up with friends and family along the way that we haven’t seen in a long time—and in some cases, we’ll be driveway surfing or “moochdocking” right outside their homes. These stops will feel like little pockets of home on the road.
We’re also looking forward to the new friendships waiting to be made—both for us and for our kids. Whether it’s a spontaneous connection at a campground, a fellow roadschooling family, or another traveler with a shared story, we know some of those bonds will last well beyond the trip.
As for the community we’re leaving in Austin—we’ll stay connected. This Blog, Instagram, and Facebook are all ways to keep up with our journey. We’ll be sending postcards (a tradition we love), and the boys are already planning to play chess online using chess.com with their friends, and perhaps Facetime.
We’re also hoping to plan a Zion National Park rendezvous during spring break in April 2026—an open invite for other families to join us. And for part of our Vietnam leg, another family may tag along, making it even more special.
This year will stretch us in new ways, but we believe connection isn’t just about proximity—it’s about intentionality. And we’re carrying our people with us, wherever we go.
Not a Vacation—A Reboot
A lot of people see something like this and think it’s a break from real life. But we don’t see it that way.
We’re not trying to escape our current life.
This is life—just reimagined.
There will absolutely be moments of, “Wait… why are we doing this again?”
But every family we’ve talked to who’s taken a similar leap says the same thing: It’s worth it.
Even when it’s a little scary.
Even if we come back different.
Actually—especially if we come back different.
We’ll be sharing our journey on cantthaiusdown.com, Instagram, and Facebook—collecting lapel pins, family photos, and unforgettable memories as we go.
And who knows—maybe our adventure will inspire yours. We can’t wait to see what the next year holds for you and your family, too.