Warren Dunes will be the fourteenth Michigan State Park with at least one all-terrain electric wheelchair. The Action Trackchair is expected to arrive in August.
Triangular wheels with a tank-like tread keep the chair stable over tree roots and through sand, making state park trails and beaches accessible to everyone.
Michelle O’Kelly is with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.
“This is something that we want to get in as many state parks as we can. We've had just a ton of support and outpouring of people that want to be able to use them.”
O’Kelly said the first five chairs were donated in 2016 from Kali’s Cure for Paralysis. She says they cost about $16,000-$16,500 each, and more with accessories. O’Kelly says all of the state park track chairs were either donated or bought through fundraising efforts.
“If you make a camping reservation, you can choose to make an extra $2 donation. We've purchased three chairs just from those funds alone in the last year,” said O’Kelly, who added that they are free to use with a reservation.
Forty-nine-year-old Julie Gray lives in Berrien County. For much of her life, Gray, who has cerebral palsy, has only looked at the beach from a car window. In June, she reserved the Action Trackchair at Holland State Park. She says she loved it.
“You know, driving around the sand and whatever, it was like, got to be like, 'watch out, here she comes.’”
Julie’s mother, Cindy Gray works for the St. Joseph office of Disability Network Southwest Michigan. She said the track chair experience gave her daughter “freedom to do things like other adults.” And she joked that her daughter now had the freedom to leave her mother “in the dust.”
“Traveling to Florida or going anywhere like that, the beaches were off-limits. We'd have to find other things to do. So, this has opened up a whole new, really, world for Julie and other people that have disabilities to be more like everyone else.”
