How RV Living After Loss Transformed Kim Ingram’s Life

A year ago, Kim Ingram was a dental assistant of more than 30 years, working out of a three-bedroom, two-bath home. Today she lives on ten acres in Live Oak, North Florida, in an RV, with her two dogs, running a full-time photography business and dreaming about a Volkswagen camper van. On this episode of First Class RV Adventures, hosted by Sandra and Louis, Kim walked through how she got from one life to the other — and why she doesn’t plan on going back.

The turning point wasn’t one single thing, Kim explained, but several forces arriving at once. A hip replacement in February forced her to retire from dental assisting. And underneath that was something heavier: a year and a half before this conversation, her daughter — an RN, 32 years old, mother of three — died tragically. Kim doesn’t dwell on the details on air, but she’s direct about the effect it had on her. Her ex-son-in-law had once joked that she could probably live a year off whatever she made selling everything in her house. After her daughter’s death, that offhand comment stopped sounding like a joke and started sounding like a plan. “Life is too short,” she said — and she began giving things away.

She calls the process “freeing,” and it clearly still moves her to talk about it. Sandra, one of the hosts, said just hearing Kim describe it gave her goosebumps — the realization of how much weight all that stuff had actually been putting on her.

Kim also traces the decision back further, to her own mother, who died of cancer at 62 after spending years waiting until retirement to finally travel. That moment, back in 2001, stuck with Kim as proof that “someday” doesn’t always come. It’s part of why she now describes herself as freer than her brother, even though he lives in a large lakefront home near Orlando and she lives in a camper. He works hard to afford that house, she said, recalling a visit where he admitted he couldn’t stop to enjoy a beautiful sunrise because he had to go to work. Kim sees her own life — birds, a slower pace, sitting by the river — as the thing people actually work their whole lives to eventually get.

The RV setup itself is practical as much as philosophical. Kim’s camper sits on her ten-acre property, and she also owns land on the Swanee River, where the water rises and falls too much to safely build a permanent structure. Renting out her original house, starting in June, now covers her mortgage and expenses — residual income that funds the RV lifestyle rather than a windfall from selling it all off. Her photography, meanwhile, has gone from a side passion to her main pursuit, including small photo travel tour workshops she’s building out, capped intentionally at four or five people so she can actually teach while she travels.

Not everything has been smooth. Kim described a recent roof leak near her AC unit during heavy rain, serious enough that she needed a five-gallon bucket in the middle of the floor. She’s hooked into a septic system since she’s stationary, and during a recent cold snap into the 20s, she ran water all night to keep pipes from freezing. She was also candid about a towing mishap: her RV had to be pulled by friends because her Jeep Grand Cherokee wasn’t capable of hauling it — a mistake she chalks up to inexperience with a rig that size, despite years of towing horse trailers and boats. Her advice for anyone considering the same move: know exactly what your vehicle can handle before you buy.

Looking ahead, Kim wants to eventually trade her current rig for something smaller — a VW-style camper van, both for gas mileage and easier parking, inspired partly by another RV family’s stories about struggling to fit big rigs into tight state park spots.

Asked how she wants to be remembered, Kim didn’t hesitate: she wants to inspire people, especially through her photography, and she wants her grandkids to say “Grammy did this and Grammy did that” — carrying on the same spirit of adventure and self-sufficiency she once taught their mother.

Kim can be found at KimIngramPhotography.com, on Facebook as Kim Ingram, and at phototraveltourworkshops.com, where she’s planning a series of local 2018 trips.