Camping

Believe it or not even wheelchair users can still go camping, with a little creativeness and the desire to get back to nature can make it happen. You have a lot of choices depending on several things. They all are contingent on your particular disability, what resources you have, and the types of places you wish to go. There are options galore when it comes to tent camping, travel-trailers, and even renting cabins. I hope that by reading about my camping experiences and how things have been designed to meet my needs that you'll get a bunch of ideas that will work for you with a little tweaking to meet your specific needs, so consider this as just a guide not gospel.

Let me start out with a few photos of a wheelchair lift that was designed and build by the Senior Engineering students who were in the University of Toledo's M.I.M.E. Engineering program. Each semester project ideas are submitted to the staff and they choose several projects and assign the students into group's to developed each project. I was fortunate enough that they chose one of my ideas. The following images will give you some idea how the lift looks when installed on our camper. Unfortunately I don't have any photos that are up close to inner workings of the lift itself. I can say this it is a lot like the van lifts that slide in under the van itself instead of folding up into the doors. For my lift there are a pair of hydraulic cylinders that do all of the lifting. I'm not 100% sure what their load capacity is but with me and my power wheelchair it can lift me with relative ease. To go down it uses gravity but it also has limiters on it that are adjustable so I don't drop to the ground like a rock. It also uses a handheld remote to slide it out from its traveling position under the camper to its usable position.

Site Last Updated On 08/27/08