California: Time to hit the road?

[SantaLuz]

We are thinking of making a life changing family decision in the next couple of months: To sell all, quit my job, buy an RV, leave California and go fulltiming across the USA for a year or so, and find a new home city. We are a family of 5 with children aged from 5 to 15. So why would we do something like this? Well for a number of reasons:

- My health has deteriorated due to stress, long commutes, and lack of time to take care of myself. I've known I needed a sabbatical for some time now. - We've made the decision that we want to move away from California, but we don't know where we want to move to. We been looking at Boise, Raleigh, and parts of Texas lately. - My oldest was diagnosed with ADD in kindergarten and we have been trying to keep him from being forced to take drugs to fit into the formal square school peg ever since. He's been in public school, home school, and currently in a very expensive private school. But it's hard to watch him suffer in a formal school setting. We just had him complete over two full days of testing, and they diagnosed him with superior intellect, but with ADD holding him back. From experience we already know home schooling or very small class setting works best for him, and the experts diagnoses confirmed that. - My wife already home schools our other children and so this is something we already have experience doing on the road. - We'd have less distractions and could really focus on the learning of our children. - We've always wanted to travel across America and see it together as a family while we are still fairly young. Both my wife and I are in our forties. Our parents retired with poor health and never had any "golden years". We want to be rich with family memories and not with material things. - Visit some older relatives across the country that we've not seen in many years and whose days are numbered. - We want to blog, write a book, and create a family movie of our experiences. - We're not rich but we can afford to do this for a year if we sell everything. We'll have less money to put as a down payment where ever we move to; but at least we'll know something about the area.

My wife and I were discussing next steps the other day when our kids begged us to go see a movie. They chose RV! Without knowing what we were talking about. My wife and I laughed so hard in the movie and winked at each other knowing our kids didn't have a clue. And the we realized we didn't either.

It would be hard to say goodbye to family and friends, and certainly there are many risks; but it is something we can't get out of our minds. Our kids are excited about it too now.

I'd be grateful in getting some opinions on best family oriented cities to live in. Best places to visit. Best RVs to own, and any extended road travel experiences with children.

Are we being bold or crazy?

[SantaLuz]

If I were seriously considering such a move I guess I might take a few short family trips. Take the kids to Texas or Raleigh, for example. While they are playing you can survey the situation. Talk to locals to get a feel for the community, jobs, hassles, bad neighborhoods, etc. Look for houses and jobs while you are there.

This is what we plan to do. I had been thinking of taking a job in Plano, or Raleigh but realized that we didn't really know the area. I want this to be our last move. We can afford to do this for a year or two and still have money for a down payment on a house. But I don't really know about the areas. I want the whole family to get a chance to see the place. So we're planning on visiting about two states a month and spending at least a couple of weeks in the areas we are most interested in. So only 25 states at most in a year. We can't see everything unfortunately. We live in a great big country!