Lived Experience: Learn Through Real Travels of Disabled Content Creators with Learners and Makers

@LearnersandMakers

🗺️ Nomad Fam: 14 Countries | 🦿 Mom Amputee
📷 Tips for stress-free family travel
⏳ Slow down ~ enjoy ~ connect
✈️ If We Can, You Can!
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Accessible Nature in North Alabama

We are the Learners and Makers: Jodie, Anthony, Connor, and Aster. Jodie is an above-knee amputee who uses a prosthetic leg. We empower families and people with mobility disabilities to travel confidently, their way. With a cozy vibe that focuses on how to slow down, connect, and enjoy each day, our worldschooling family of four has been traveling the world full time since 2022.

Hills, trails, lakes, and gardens open green space to visitors who have mobility disabilities

When seeking outdoor recreation, a traveler with a mobility disability isn’t just looking for green space, but a welcoming space. Fortunately, from gardens in urban Huntsville to state parks throughout North Alabama, you can find not only Southern hospitality, but accessibility.

6 accessible natural wonders in North Alabama

As an above-knee amputee who uses a prosthetic leg for walking mobility, Jodie visited 6 natural spaces in North Alabama, along with husband Anthony, 13-year-old son Connor, and 11-year-old daughter Aster:

1. Cathedral Caverns State Park
2. Talmadge Butler Boardwalk Trail at DeSoto State Park
3. Little River Falls
4. Huntsville Botanical Garden
5. Bridgeport Walking Bridge
6. Lake Guntersville State Park

Each destination considers accessibility a priority, with constant improvements made and more underway to continue increasing access for people with disabilities, impairments, or other mobility conditions.

Cave Tour at Cathedral Caverns State Park

Our family of four has visited caves throughout the USA, and even one in Vietnam, but never have we encountered a cave as accessible as Cathedral Caverns.

Uneven stone steps? Nope. The cave is also devoid of the metal staircases often present in other public caves. A 25-foot-tall, 126-foot-wide natural entrance also made it easy for staff to add a paved, gently inclined slope for visitors.

The there-and-back tour totals a little over half a mile. Ever since becoming part of the state park system in 2000, Cathedral Caverns has had many improvements to its access, including:

• Visitors with mobility disabilities can ride in an electric vehicle with the tour guide
• A wide paved asphalt path takes visitors through the cave. Most of the way is level, with some slope, and a couple of steep sections
• Ambient lighting so visitors can focus on the sights and features, and less on monitoring how they move through the cave

There are no tight spaces throughout the 3,350 feet you head into the cave, either. Intriguing rock formations come to life with lore throughout the large passages and caverns. Each guide has their own stories to tell and highlights distinct features of the cave and its history, from once storing barrels of Cold War survival supplies, to the shark teeth in the ceiling that remind us this once was sea floor.

While here, also visit the Unclaimed Baggage Center

Nearby Scottsboro is home to one of the region’s most famed attractions. Unclaimed Baggage Center has become a bargain store repository for items left on planes, trains, buses, and more.