Wheelchair Holidays : The Americas

Wheelchair Accessible American National Parks

For a number of years now we have made an effort to locate our annual holiday in the Southern African bushveld and take time to appreciate the flora and fauna before it is swallowed up by mankind’s “progress”. It is for this reason that one theme has also flowed through our journeys to the USA, namely the American National Parks.

There are too many to address in this article, but let’s whet our appetites with a brief insight into three of them.

Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

The best known is probably Yellowstone National Park, in Wyoming, just about plumb in the middle of the continent, and having been established in 1872, the first national park in the world. Here we experienced our first sight of the diversity of landscapes for stretching out into the valley for kilometres in front of the 98 year old, 5-storey wood log Old Faithful Inn is an entire geothermal basin.

Out on the boardwalks which snake their way through this bubbling, boiling and steaming landscape one can easily be led to believe that you’re on the set of futuristic film, or a distant planet. It is only the sight of pine forests in the distance that bring one back to earth.

Some geysers quietly simmer, others boil like cauldrons, some are crystal clear, others look like molten chocolate, some splutter and spurt, and others like Old Faithful and Castle Geyser blast boiling water and steam hundreds of metres into the air before calming down to recharge their boilers. Yellowstone Falls lie at the north end of a very deep canyon that cuts across the park. Here the reason for the parks name becomes clearly evident with the canyon wall colours ranging from a light yellow to rich rust and reds. The extreme variance in scenery is notable across the parks 2.2-million acres, with vast areas of shallow flatlands and snaking rivers, followed by high mountains and waterfalls, forests followed by open grass meadows.

It was alongside these rivers that we encountered the larger wildlife, with regular sightings of bison, moose, elk, and pronghorn, and bear. Nearer to the campsites and lodges one finds the smaller animals such as marmots, pikas, and chipmunks, and of course the ever present crows, hawks and blue jays. As is usually the case the first bison sighting resulted in rapid braking and much camera clicking and video zooming. During the next two days bison became so common a sight that by the time we left one of them would have had to tap-dance on the bonnet to catch our attention!

Yosemite National Park

Yosemite National Park is the most visited of the parks, with over 3.5-million tourists entering its gates last year. Located just three hours drive east of San Francisco it is only 760 000 acres, but boasts the most spectacular scenery of all. It ranges from Mariposa Grove which contains giant sequoias, Glacier Point's spectacular view of the valley and high country, the sub alpine Tuolumne Meadows, to Hetch Hetchy’s reservoir in a valley. The classic view greeting visitors who exit the Yosemite tunnel, of El Capitan on the left, Half Dome in the middle, and the Bridal Veil Falls on the right, with the valley floor stretching out below is quite unforgettable and for a moment one can become oblivious to the babbling visitors munching hamburgers and dribbling ice-cream and Coca-Cola in the morning sun. The saying goes “a picture is worth a thousand words”, well that view “is worth a thousand pictures”.

On the valley floor the surrounding sheer rock mountains are so dominant that one cannot see sky through the motorcar windshield. Yosemite Falls plunge 850m in two distinct stages, while the Bridal Veil Falls seem to tip of the edge of a saucepan shaped escarpment into a gorge filled with granite rocks each bigger than a house. Yosemite is rather unique in that the protection offered to the valley by the surrounding mountains, the regular water supply, and the stable climate have combined to create a very compact eco-system which under normal circumstances would have been completely undisturbed by external forces or events. The one event it was not protected from was the encroachment of man and I couldn’t help but sit and wonder what this magnificent valley must have looked like 300 years ago.

Sequoia National Park

Sequoia National Park, three hours south of Yosemite, ranges from 500m to 5000m in elevation with the Generals Highway climbs over 1600m from chaparral and oak-studded foothills to the awe-inspiring sequoia groves. Only a small portion of the park is accessible by car which makes Sequoia something of a bonus for hikers of all fitness levels. Walking trails aside, Sequoia holds a treat that to this day still boggles our minds. For here we were able to see the largest living organisms on planet earth, the giant sequoia trees. Not as tall as the redwoods, though still reaching 100m into the sky, with bases ranging from 8m to 11m in diameter nothing matches the sheer volume of the sequoias.

Sadly it was not until foresters had destroyed 35% of the sequoia forests that they discovered that the wood was useless for construction due to its brittle nature. The best they could do was turn it into vine stakes and roof shingles! Whilst they may have been heavily logged this weakness probably saved them from extinction. Their ages are unknown, but it is estimated that the giants are between 1800 and 2700 years old. They have seen civilisations come and go, and standing in their shadow one’s place in the greater scheme of things is quickly brought home.

Refer to the National Park Services website for more info : www.nps.gov/parks.html.

Hilton is permanently based in a wheelchair through spinal muscular atrophy. Together, Hilton and his wife have repeatedly proved that travelling in a wheelchair need neither be daunting, nor limiting, and hope their experiences will be of benefit to anyone who is may be planning such a tour. 

Reproduced with kind permission of Hilton Purvis
P O Box 371,
Noordhoek, 7979,
South Africa.

Wheelchair Holidays : The Americas