Title: Accessible Vacations Introduction
Traveling to America’s National Parks is something that my family has talked about off and on over the years. Surprisingly, I haven’t been to any of the National Parks here in Michigan but I have been to Great Smokey Mountains. Therefore when I saw a guidebook called Accessible Vacations: An Insider’s Guide to 10 National Parks by Simon J. Hayhoe was available on NetGalley I got excited. Sadly, I was overall disappointed with the book. Scroll down for more details.
I think the major problem with the book is that I wanted it to be geared primarily towards the “average tourist” whereas in reality it was written for a multitude of audiences: researchers/historians, National Park Service employees, tourists and teachers/educators. The book is split into three major sections:
- History of accessibility within the entire National Parks Service
- Types of “Access Needs” and technologies that people with disabilities may utilize
- Profiles of 10 different Parks spread across the continental United States
Overall, I had high hopes for this book but was disappointed. I felt like the choice of parks profiled and the information provided was not as helpful as I’d wanted. If I was planning a trip to one of the parks I’d still have a lot of research that I would need to do.
Section by Section Review
History of accessibility within the entire National Parks Service
As someone who is involved with research through my job I can appreciate the amount of time and effort that went into the writing of this book. I found some aspects of the accessibility history of the Parks interesting but on the whole I’m not sure it added much to the overall purpose of the book. I felt like the content in that section would have been better published separately- either in academic journal or publication or as it’s own book/pamphlet. I think that a summary of this information would add value to a guidebook geared towards tourists but perhaps not to this level of detail.
Types of “Access Needs” and technologies that people with disabilities may utilize
This section seemed to be written towards Park Service employees to help them understand what types of needs their visitors may have. Therefore, again while interesting I wasn’t expecting this much information (or at least to this the level of detail) to be included in a book for people wanting to plan their vacation. I think that having a glossary of terms used in the individual park profiles would be helpful to help readers understand the varying levels of accessibility. Which brings me to one of my major pet peeves of the book: the phrase ‘largely accessible’ is used so frequently and I honestly don’t know what that means!
Profiles of 10 different Parks spread across the continental United States
This is what I really wanted the focus of the book to be: information about specific parks. I recognized a few of the chosen parks but others were new to me. This was both good and bad; it opened my eyes to new options but I also think that readers might be disappointed that more “popular” ones weren’t discussed. For example, Great Smokey Mountains was not discussed.
Note about the National Park Access Pass
I’m also really surprised the author didn’t include more information about the National Park Service’s National Access Pass! The following is copied directly from the National Park Service’s website:
“The Access Pass, part of the America the Beautiful – National Parks and Federal Recreational Lands Pass Series, is available free for US citizens or permanent residents with permanent disabilities. The Access Pass may be issued to U.S. citizens or permanent residents of any age that have been medically determined to have a permanent disability (does not have to be a 100% disability) that severely limits one or more major life activities. Applicants must provide documentation of permanent disability and residency or citizenship.”
