SFMOMA from Martin Luther King Memorial

San Francisco has many wonderful museums, some within walking distance of each other. The mother of them all is the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), a architecturally fascinating building across from Yerba Buena Gardens. Interestingly enough, my kids enjoy the building almost more than the exhibits. Last time we went, we spent a long time on the suspension bridge on the 4th floor, running back and forth, looking down to the lobby below.

Around the corner, on Howard Street, is the California Academy of Sciences in temporary digs while their Golden Gate Park home is being retrofitted. The Steinhardt Aquarium is fascinating all by itself, but my 5 year old thinks the Nature Nest was created just for her!

Across town, near the Palace of Fine Arts, is probably our favorite family adventure in San Francisco, the Exploratorium. We can go and spend the entire day here! My favorite has always been the cow eyeball dissecting exhibit. When the kids were little, I could hardly pull them away from the giant bubble maker; nowadays, my son is fascinated with the science of sports, especially skateboarding, while my daughter likes to spend all her time in the tactile dome. As I said, an entire day’s worth of activities!

Photo courtesy of David Paul Ohmer.

Recently on my flight back to Shanghai from the Kango headquarters in Palo Alto, California, I began chatting with a nice lady sitting next to me. She soon warmed up to me and informed me she was the mother of two sons, a college accounting student and an autistic teen. One thing led to another and she began telling me how much the elder boy enjoys putting effort into planning family vacations (i.e. selecting destinations, scheduling itinerary, routing on maps.)

This was my first experience talking to the mother of a child with special needs. I was surprised that she didn’t rant about the inconveniences that accompany traveling with her younger son. I have the feeling that if we can do some research and put up a summary of travel tips for parents of disabled children, we can help make trips better for all involved.
Here are stories and photographs for and about traveling with disabled children— from fathers, mothers, researchers and the kids themselves.

Get Around Guide — a blog by Darren Hillock. Darren is the father to a child who needs a wheelchair to get around. His blog is updated very frequently and he keeps close track of the latest news and regulations about disability travel. He also blogs about destination travel access for parents like him.

Dream Mom, formerly a Senior Account Manager in the healthcare industry, blogging motivation is her son, Dear Son, “who has lost his ability to walk on his knees, sit up and hold his head up (in 2005)“.

Growing up with a disability : David is going to Dominican University this week. Congratulations to him! He has been recording his interviews for people living with disabilities: “Personal, real stories – be they humorous, sad, angry, fun, or … whatever!” He is an active participant of blog carnival for disabilities and has many quality posts (like Top 10 Disability Themes) on his blog.

Ryn Tale’s Book of Days: ROOOOAAAR!: Kathryn is the mother to a beautiful girl Ellie, who is a “27-weeker preemie warrior princess“. I like Kathryn’s Observations from the blogosphere which provides great reviews on the blogs of this interest.

Rolling Rains Report: by Scott Rains: Keywords to describe this blog are: Travel, Disability, and Universal Design. The most exciting part of this blog is the photo sharing about ‘Travel with a Disability’. It is a 286-member group on Flickr. Is there a better way to share a trip than through sharing photographs?

Here are some tips about disability travel from my research:

Jill Browne from Suite 101 writes great articles about air travel guide for disabled travelers. Besides A Guide for Persons with Disabilities: Taking Charge of the Air Travel Experience by Canadian Transportation Agency, UK Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee also provides printable guidelines on its website, Access to air travel: guidance for disabled and less mobile passengers.

Jill Browne also analyzed the Airline Disability Complaints 2006, helping everyone make sense of the numbers in the U.S. Department of Transportation reports. The relative number of disability complaints per 1 million passengers is the best metric by which an airline should be judged.

Jim Lubin started this ultimated resources for disABILITY in 1994. Disability Travel and Recreation Resources provides a list of websites in the following categories:

• Travel Planning
• Destinations
• Transportation
• Air Travel
• Especially for Children
• Books to Buy!
• Other

Updates:

- Scott from Rolling Rains Report suggested Candy Harrington‘s travel tips for us. Candy is an editor of Emerging Horizons a magazine about accessible travel and author of 3 books (1 is upcoming). There are some great links on her blog roll. Thank you Scott!

* Please feel free to suggest good resources about accessible travel to us. Email me: min.guo#kango.com.

For my birthday this year, I received a Garmin eTrex Legend personal navigator, better known as a GPS device. I asked this for this little wonder, so our family could engage in something called GeoCaching. After a few test runs around our neighborhood, we were ready to take it on vacation, and what better place than the beautiful island of Maui!

Our family loves to travel, but with two kids age 5 and 7, spending long days looking at tourist spots is not going to cut it. And in Maui, too much time on the beach turns us all into lobsters. A mid-day treasure hunt would allow us to learn more about a locale, at the same time providing my kids an outlet for their boundless energy.

Consulting Geocaching.com, an online repository for hidden caches, I downloaded a plan to find a cache in downtown Lahaina. This was not far from where we were staying in Kaanapali, and a quick ride on the West Maui Shopping shuttle put us right behind the movie theater on Front Street, a good starting point for our search.

I already knew from reading the other reports about the cache, that it was hidden close to the Banyan Tree on Front Street. That tree alone is worth a trip to Lahaina – the tree was planted in 1873 and is currently 60 feet high and takes up about 2/3 of a acre at Banyan Tree Park. After snapping the required photo of kids next to one of the huge trunks, we moved away from under the tree (the signal was not able to make it through the canopy) and got a line on our treasure.

We were after a virtual cache, which meant there was no hidden treasure to find, but there was a plaque for us to locate with some significant historical information. We were to find the plaque and email the answer to the question to the cache owner. From Front Street, we headed towards the water, around the side of Banyan Park. On the way, we went past local musicians playing ukuleles, and many island crafters with their wares set up on blankets in the park. As we got closer to the water, we could see the cruise ships out at sea. Our GPS device was telling us we were very close, so we started to look for a plaque. The only one we could find nearby was in front of the lighthouse. And reading the plaque indicated we had found the right place! Our job was to find out how much the Hawaiian caretaker was paid – $20 a year! In addition, we learned that the Lahaina Lighthouse was constructed in 1840 to help navigate the tricky waters through the narrow coral reef. At this point, my kids lost interest and spent the rest of the time climbing on the posts around the lighthouse. However, we decided that all in all, the adventure was pretty successful. The husband and I learned more about our destination and our family had a fun puzzle to solve. As soon as we found it, the kids were asking what our next cache was going to be!

Elliott, Min and Alex have all given their introductions, so now it is time to tell you a little about me. I was born in Tennessee, a state in the southeast part of the U.S., and home to Al Gore. I now live in California, on the west coast of the U.S., and now also home to Al Gore (detecting a trend?). No… I am not stalking the former vice president. I do share some of his ideas, like improving the environment, and I believe there is no better way to instill a desire to preserve nature than to experience its beauty and wonder first hand. I think traveling outside your familiar surroundings and your comfort zone can be an education as well as an adventure.

Living in San Francisco provides me with a wealth of cultural and historical nourishment, (not to mention amazing views) but it also gives me easy access to completely different settings. Two hours south, I am on the beaches of Santa Cruz; three hours east, I am in the mountains surrounding Lake Tahoe. I have also been blessed to live in very different parts of the country such as Florida, Texas and Utah. Moving around a lot has given me an appreciation for different climates and cuisines, but it has also taught me that stereotypes are for the mentally lazy – there is always something to learn or discover.

San Francisco, California — Marina District

I am excited to be building a travel product from the ground up. Having worked in other online start-ups as well as the travel industry, I have an appreciation for the limitless possibilities the web brings to the traveler. Whether it’s a 2 day road trip or 2 weeks abroad, I want to give you the tools to inspire a great experience and prevent any pitfalls.