After a very long pause in my blogging status, I have returned to chat about accessible travel with a twist. While I was away I had some major life events happen. After several years we finalized our adoption of a beautiful baby boy. This led to me revamping my travels to kid friendly day trips, zoos, children's museums, and the like, that I didn't think would be that interesting. I needed to wrap my head around what this blog was going to become. I decided that I want to continue to focus on travels that are accessible, but also that are adult and family friendly. Now a year after my wife returned with our son we have decided to do a trip and teach our son the wonders of traveling. We are taking our boy to Hawaii.
We decided that we could all use a return to the beautiful island of Kauai. We have both been there before and really loved it. We started scouring the internet, talking to our travel agents, and talking to people who had stayed there before with kids. This is something new for us. We have always had to think about wheelchair friendly, but now we need kid friendly, and easy going too.
My wife who sparked this wonderful idea works with a woman who turned us onto the website Vacation Rental by Owners. It is a global network of home and condo owners who, as the website states, rent their properties out. We plugged in our requirements: wheelchair friendly (their term), kid friendly, and multi-room. There were many returns for our query. You have to be careful when going through them. You must know the measurements of your chair, what you are physically capable of doing, and most important look at the area. Figure out what is important to be around (i.e. grocery stores, resorts, beaches, or trails). Then start your search.
We were able to find several condos, and finally settled on a wheelchair friendly 3 bedroom home which sets us back a whole $175.00 per night. It is in a nice neighborhood, has a gas BBQ, beach toys and is 5 minutes from the beach. All for less than you can get a hotel in most cities.
We are less than 2 months from our trip and I will tell more soon about some very cool family friendly and accesssible tips as we find them.
