Who? Us?

We are two disabled, oldish women who have been adventuring through life for years. We are talking about how disabilities, both visible and not, change the way we enjoy our retirement.

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Scootering Around

We are travelers. We have been travelers for over 50 years separately and together.  My first years of travel and probably where the fire was started was with my parents in Michigan.  When my dad got his week long vacation (later 2 weeks) from the factory, we went camping somewhere. We often drove around Lake Michigan and went sightseeing in the Upper Peninsula, around to Wisconsin, back south and around the bottom of the lake and back home to Spring Lake Michigan.

After finishing school way back in 1969, it wasn’t long before I didn’t let work get in the way of my travel addiction.

I bummed around in Europe as often as I could. I set out to see every state in the US, at least the contiguous ones. My travel continued when my mobility became a problem.  After all, when would I let a lack of mobility keep me from traveling?

Our first long road trip with me not walking was in 2009.  We started from New Orleans on a trip to see friends in Oregon and Washington. 
Of course, we stopped at Zion, Arches, Bryce and Grand Canyon on the way.  One great thing about being on a scooter is that you see things from a different angle without getting on your hands and knees.

Arches had an amazing number of off road trails that my scooter could navigate. Some of them were not marked, but still pretty easy to ride on.  As well as the National Parks do, there is a long ways to go to accommodate the disabled traveler. Most of the visitor centers are fitted out with accessible bathrooms and entries, but seeing the films and the brochures way up on the counters can be tough. We find it’s easiest just to not avail ourselves of that service as much as we might want to.

The gift shops are so hard to navigate, it’s mostly easier just to avoid them. Stop stuffing so many t-shirts in there, people.


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