Morgan County’s Hard Labor Creek State Park is now one of 11 state facilities that are offering, free of charge, the use of an All-Terrain Track Chair.
According to Hard Labor Creek State Park Superintendent Carol Sanchez, the chair is a double tracked vehicle that allows persons with disabilities the ability to experience the outdoors.
The chair came to the park on Nov. 4 as part of the Amy Copeland Foundation’s initiative to enable “people with mobility impairments to enjoy the nurturing and healing qualities that the vast natural resources of our state has to offer.”
“We have a vision of an inclusive Georgia where everyone has the opportunity to live and play in their own community,” says the foundation’s website.
Following a zip-lining incident in 2012, Copeland was hospitalized and diagnosed with necrotizing fasciitis, a flesh eating, bacterial infection, the website states. She had both hands, her right foot and entire left leg amputated in a successful effort to save her life.
Since that incident, Copeland has been a driving force in creating solutions for persons with mobility issues using the outdoors. “People who use wheelchairs are often separated from the outdoors due to mobility and accessibility issues,” her foundation website states.
Sanchez says since the program’s launch, the park has issued the impressive vehicle three times. Sanchez says members of the Amy Copeland Foundation vetted the park prior to delivering the chairs to insure that the park could make hiking trails appropriate for the vehicle.
Hard Labor Creek State Park currently has approximately three miles available to the track chair. Sanchez says the chair can also be used in other common areas. “It also makes our shoreline and fishing areas accessible,” she says.
To use the chair, a participant goes through a short training session and must come to the park with a partner. The electric chair can be reserved in four or eight hour blocks. “Everybody who has used it comes back very excited,” Sanchez says. A local woman used the chair for the both the hiking trails and to be with her family around the trading post, including the miniature golf area. “She said it was nice to know she could go with them anywhere in the park.”
The “beefed-up” chair will allow people with mobility issues to “finally be able to use our park,” Sanchez says.
To reserve a chair, go to the website www.allterraingeorgia.org and follow the prompts. Everyone who uses a chair must have a “buddy” for safety reasons, Sanchez says.
Sanchez says Hard Labor Creek State Park was excited to be included in the program. “It’s a way to get more Georgians out onto public lands,” she says.
Credit: Morgan County Citizen
Credit: Morgan County Citizen
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