motorhome
Adapting motorhome travel for a wheelchair passenger
We are one week into our summer vacation and my children have been relentless in reminding me that it’s time to go camping. In fact, my two younger children have been spent every night this week sleeping in the motorhome impatiently awaiting our first trip of the season. I am so glad that my kids still enjoy our family getaways. I am told that some day they will get to an age that spending time on the road with their family in a motorhome will not be something that excites them anymore. I hope that doesn’t happen but, just in case, we are going to jump at every opportunity to camp with them that we can!
One issue we have struggled with as Quincy has gotten older and bigger is how to get her into the motorhome. It can be done with a two-person lift, but it’s tough manuevering up three steps and through a narrow door while carrying her. Someone always has to do this backwards and that takes a lot of coordination and strength. Although this approach works, it does depend on both my husband and I being physically strong and available any time we camp with Quincy. This has made it difficult for one of us to do it alone. So, if we want to go to Homer and my husband wants to go out on an all-day halibut charter, I am unable to move about with Quincy. Or, if I am on one of my DC trips (next week, in fact) then he can’t take the kids the camping without me.
So, it has become evident that for our independence we need a better solution. Our first issue is the wheelchair. The travel chair we use for Quincy is very wide, wider than even her daily wheelchair, and it’s difficult to get through even standard doors and thresholds. Her regular chair is skinnier, but heavy and there is no way to store it. One thing about raising a child like Quincy, who has been disabled since she was an infant, is that we have tons of equipment that we have used over the years. So, we started looking through that inventory and found a smaller travel wheelchair (one that folds up) that is skinnier than her current one. Quincy has gotten tall over the years, but is still very skinny, so the only real issue was to modify the smaller chair to accomodate her height and that was easily accomplished by adding a headrest extender.
Once we found a wheelchair that would fit through the motorhome door then we were left with finding a ramp. We found two steel folding ramps at Lowe’s that are mostly likely designed for loading a riding lawnmower into the bed of a truck. They are steel and that makes them fairly heavy and we would still like to find something lighter, but for the time being we have a solution. If we put the ramps up to the door and we use the smaller travel chair, then we can simply wheel her right in to the motorhome. Then, we just transfer her into a car seat, fold up the wheelchair and the ramps and store them in the cargo storage and we are off!
As with any new system that we develop to make our lives easier with Quincy we know there will be glitches. So today we will head out for a weekend camping trip to give our new system a trial run. This will give us the opportunity to work through all the unexpected issues that might come up while we aren’t far from home.
Last summer as we journeyed down the Alaska highway we saw a Class A Diesel pusher coach that had modified it’s front passenger door with a lift. It was owned by an elderly couple, the wife was wheelchair bound, that were spending their retirement years traveling the U.S. It was really cool. Someday, when my younger children have grown and moved on, I can see Rob and Q and I traveling the States in a rig like that. Until then, we will continue to make our smaller, more humble motorhome work the best we can so we can all be safe and have fun as we adventure out to see new places and new things.
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