I’m trying out a personal blog for the first time, rather than mass mailings. A journey within a journey I suppose, for our 40th anniversary cross-country trip (see http://web.stanford.edu/~lmcrae/travel-2015-cct40).
Having made accommodations across the country and back for myself and a wheel’d companion, I thought an interesting theme might be how well the hotels meet their self-declared “accessible room” claims. Of course I’ll include other tasty trip bits, but this gives me something at least for those days like this one, spent just getting us from there to here.
We successfully left Menlo Park only 1/2 hour late, despite a frenzy of last minute packing (the norm for us) and with invaluable help from John’s caregiver Will. Excerable stop and go traffic between Fairfield and Davis probably added an hour or more to the driving, but we made it to Winnemucca in plenty of time for a relaxing dinner. The name Winnemucca is of course Paiute for “Land of many casinos”, and indeed we had to walk through a room full of bright loud gaming machines and the smell of cigarette smoke to get to the hotel restaurant.
But I know you are waiting for hotel details! This is the Best Western Gold Country Inn. Plenty of handicap parking near the door close to our room. A spacious room with decent maneuverability, large comfy bed …
but one thing I have noted with even accessible rooms is that given self-closing doors, it’s awkward to help John in while jockeying card and door and push/pulling him through the opening. I usually leave a comment about having a doorstop for accessible rooms, but so far the revolution has not taken hold. I imagine there are “rules” about “fire safety” or something 🙂 Instead we get this innovation in heath conscious hospitality .. the TV remote freshness wrapper!
Kudos for both in-bathroom and out roll-under sinks. Wide bathroom door … check! easy access to toilet … check! Bathtub/shower combination … as expected. They will say “roll-in shower” if one is available, and that is much harder to come by.
Lynn