From local adventures to a family road trip: Here's how we tested my mom's travel needs
- My mother has Parkinson's disease, so to build up for our first big family road trip, we first started out by taking small trips around town.
- This experimentation built my and my mother's confidence while establishing a comfort baseline.
- My mother told me that she's still nervous to travel, but that it felt good to be out with her family.
To prepare for our first family vacation after my mother's Parkinson's had advanced considerably, we started out small.
My mother developed the first signs of Parkinson's about 10 years ago but it wasn’t until a series of falls in early 2021 that her mobility became significantly challenged. Parkinson's disease is a degenerative brain disorder that can lead to shaking and difficulty with motor functions.
Until a few years ago, she would fly alone to visit me in New York City at least once per year. After landing at LaGuardia Airport, she would catch a bus to Harlem, navigate several subway lines, then walk to my apartment with her suitcase – all by herself.
Suddenly unable to walk without assistance after her falls, and now requiring accessible accommodations that she hadn't considered just a year earlier, we worried we wouldn’t be able to include her in our family's vacation.
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My mother had only gotten out of rehab a few months before our planned summer trip to Indianapolis, and I had just temporarily relocated to Milwaukee to help her adjust to the higher level of care she now required at home. Theoretically, she liked the idea of joining me, my sister, her husband, and their two children on vacation but, understandably, she had a lot of anxiety about the trip.
Working up to a big trip
To build up for our first big family road trip, we first started out by taking small trips around town.
Our local adventures included meeting a friend for lunch at a restaurant, attending a jazz concert in the park, and celebrating my niece's fifth birthday at a nearby playground. These experiences allowed us to experiment with her level of comfort using a walker, trying out public bathrooms, and navigating the uneven dirt, rock, grass and wood-chipped terrain in outdoor spaces.
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Not only did this experimentation build my and my mother's confidence, it also established a baseline for what she was and wasn't comfortable with, what obstacles we should be aware of on the trip, and what accommodations we should request.
We learned we needed a fully Americans with Disabilities Act-accessible hotel room, accessible bathrooms at every attraction, and a wheelchair for any activity that required more than a few minutes of walking.
We decided our first big vacation would be a road trip to Indianapolis because it was driving distance from my mother's home, so she would be able to use accessible bathrooms at travel centers instead of struggling with tiny airplane bathrooms. We also chose Indianapolis because the city's Accessibility Guide made it easy to find activities the entire family could enjoy together.
'I didn't feel like I missed out on anything'
As a brand-new caregiver, I was – and still am – learning what accommodations exist for travelers with disabilities so, before our trip, I called the bed and breakfast to confirm the accessible room had a walk-in shower and support bars all over the bathroom.
I also confirmed that all the museums we hoped to visit provided wheelchairs, which was necessary because the wheelchair we ordered when my mom was in rehab was several months back-ordered.
Together, we visited the famed Van Gogh exhibit at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, we explored the Madam CJ Walker exhibit at the Indiana Historical Society, and my mom got to watch her grandkids have the time of their lives at the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, the largest in the country.
"I enjoyed things I didn't think I'd enjoy," my mother told me after the trip. "And I didn't feel like I missed out on anything!"
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This summer, our family will return to Indiana, visiting our favorite spots in Indianapolis and add in a new city, Bloomington, to try out brand-new experiences. My mother told me that she's still nervous to travel, but that it felt good to be out with her family last time that she’s really looking forward to the trip.
"As a kid, I loved traveling with my parents and grandparents and now I'm the grandparent traveling with my kids and their kids," she said. "I hope my grandmother enjoyed traveling with me as much as I'm enjoying traveling with my grandkids."
Cassandra Brooklyn is a freelance writer specializing in travel, culture, and all things outdoors, She is also the founder of EscapingNY, a travel consultancy specializing in off-the-beaten-path travel around the world. You can follow her on Twitter @escapingnewyork.