omgitsamiracle

Sunday morning had us up and out of the house in time to see sunrise from the Japanese Fishing Shrine on the east side of Oahu. Thankfully the east side has lots of easy-to-access beautiful spots to watch sunrise from, you'll see other locations in future posts about this trip! The shrine has a pull off from the road, space for about three cars. And the walk to the shrine is up approximately 10 to 15 stairs, that I navigated my slowly without my cane. (photo description: F in silhouette against the sunrise over the east side- he is standing on top of a rock with his arms spread wide in the air)  (photo description: looking back at the shoulder of Koko Head, you can see the highway in the foreground, in the distance you can see Sandy Beach and the shoulder of Makapu'u) For brunch we hit up Koko Head Café, which has a really nice outdoor seating area (right now they have some annoying aggressive chickens!!). We shared some amazing dumplings, more on that l...

On my first full day in Oahu, my friend F and I had breakfast at Moena Café, one of my favorites! We ordered lilikoi mochi pancakes and short rib loco moco and split them. One thing that I always need to think about in advance when I am traveling is where I am going to eat- because I am immunosuppressed, I do not eat indoors since the start of COVID. We take advantage of the Zippy's location in Hawaii Kai by buying some beverages there, because they are right next to Moena Café and their seating is open-air. There is a nice view across the lagoon/marina. (photo description: pictures of lilikoi mochi pancakes on the left, and short rib loco moco on the right) Next we decided we wanted some sunshine, so we drove around to Waimanalo Beach Park. If your goal is maximum beauty and minimum effort, Waimanalo should definitely be on your list. There is a very small strip of flat land between the towering Ko'olau mountains and a gorgeous massively long east side beach. There...

I am very fortunate to have friends that live in amazing places that let me come visit them! My latest trip was to Oahu to stay with my friend F and visit a handful of other friends on island. This was my 10th(?!) trip, so I am very comfortable searching for flight routes with lie flat seats (a necessity for my hEDS body) and also navigating once I'm there. (Description of picture: a screenshot of a weather app showing multiple locations on Oahu, all in the 70° range, comparing to Baltimore at 30°) In order for my domestic East Coast -> West Coast flight to have lie flat seats, I had to travel up to EWR, Newark Airport. The easiest way to do this from my home in Baltimore is to take Amtrak- this trip I took on the Acela, but I also like booking business class on the Northeast Regional train, because you can pre-book your seat and there is a little bit more space on the NER trains (though I do find it harder to navigate my power chair through the doors in NER trains)....

Hi! I'm Lindsay - a 40 year old white lady from the Mid-Atlantic coast of the USA. I love to travel and I am an ambulatory wheelchair user. Prior to my last few international trips, I struggled to find helpful information about it or how I could navigate the place I was traveling to by wheelchair, so I'm hoping sharing some of my experiences can be helpful to others in similar situations. My blog title refers to things that ambulatory wheelchair users experience all the time - the general public thinking that "it's a miracle!!" if someone using a wheelchair can't stand. Not understanding that a large portion of wheelchair users are ambulatory, we just can walk far or stand for a long time, or some combination of those. Non-disabled people can have a very black-and-white understanding of disability and don't understand that plenty of non-paralyzed people or non-amputees use wheelchairs to facilitate mobility independence in the world. I hope the...