Feel Good Friday: Winnebago Builds a More Accessible RV to Help Everyone Get Away

Source: Ryan D'Agostino, CarAndDriver.com

For today’s edition of “Feel Good Friday”, we would like to highlight a new RV built by Winnebago that has adaptivity and accessibility in mind for disabled travelers. The following excerpt comes from an article at CarAndDriver.com. You can read the rest of the article by clicking here.

When you or a family member is disabled, either by birth or by happenstance, one of the many privileges that can be diminished is the privilege of spontaneity. I miss not having to plan.

Whether it's jumping in the car to go for ice cream or jumping in the car to go to the beach for a week, moments of inspiration can be complicated by the addition of a wheelchair. Or by chronic pain that must be managed with medication. By dietary considerations most people don't have. Even by a cane, I imagine. Or a walker.

This is not a complaint, mind you. Just a reality.

We took lots family car trips before our younger son needed a wheelchair, back in the first seven glorious years of his life. He and his older brother would climb in the back seat of our blue station wagon, and they were always good passengers—sharing Goldfish, no one fighting about who was touching whose side of the seat.

Now that the younger boy is on wheels and requires medications injected through a tube into his belly, the idea of a spontaneous weekend road trip someplace, while not impossible, often seems that way.

The older one had an idea—he always has an idea of a place to go, or a thing to do, or a way to spend money—which was to take an RV trip. This seemed doable. We had test-driven a Winnebago a few years before, and it was one of our best and most memorable family trips and one I recommend, whether you buy or rent a vehicle. (You can read about it here.)

An RV is a self-contained unit that could hold all of our supplies, including the wheelchair. We wouldn't need public restrooms—always a challenge—and could prepare foods and medications easily.

It would be, we desperately hoped, a little like old times.

I typed every imaginable term into the search engine: "wheelchair accessible RV," "adaptive RV," "RV for differently-abled," "recreational vehicles for the non-ambulatory."

Even the un-PC "handicapped RV."

Nothing.

This seemed weird. Not to stereotype, but I kind of always assumed that, as fun as they are for young families, RVs were perennially popular with our esteemed elder population—an ideal retirement activity. And some older people need help getting around. Ergo: "wheelchair accessible RV."

I dug into some research. As it turned out, Winnebago was preparing to roll out its first-ever series of accessible RVs (this was 2019), and my family and I were able to test-drive an early version of the Adventurer AE, a 31-foot ride with a Braun platform lift.

Destination: Vermont. Some friends about four hours away who live in a gorgeous wood house they designed and built. On a dirt road. Without another house in sight.

And a big field out front, a perfect parking spot for us.

Let’s all celebrate Winnebago for thinking forward and being inclusive with its new adaptive RV that will leave a lasting impact for disabled travelers and feel good on this Friday. Stay safe!