Accessible Travel in the USA: Surviving the Storms of the Appalachian Mountains

What a day! We left the beautiful city of Pittsburgh drove through three states (Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Virginia) into North Carolina while surviving the biggest rainstorm I have ever experienced.

Before we left Pittsburgh there were a few more sights we had to see:

Strip District: Our hotel was in this district with lots of cultural shops, supermarkets and restaurants. A must visit for sports fans as there's a sporting good stores with lots of affordable Pittsburgh sports team memorabilia. It's also a must visit for all shoppers and foodies (The most popular restaurants are located here - one is the Primanti Brother's which we wrote about yesterday and the other is next on the list) ! :) Unfortunately not all the shops or restaurants are accessible.

S&D Polish Deli: Torrance found this place online. They are voted as having the best pierogi in Pittsburgh and boy were they good! The red borsch was very tasty too. The deli is open for lunch only (until 4:30PM) and is accessible except for the washroom.

Classy Cab: We also visited the cab company that owns the largest fleet of MV1s in Pittsburgh, they own and lease over 20 MV1s!

Overall I'm impressed with Pittsburgh's consciousness to ensure the city is accessible with buses, inclines, and taxis (we didn't get to try the subways) are all accessible.

After saying goodbye to Pittsburgh, we had a long journey ahead of us. The ride through the rest of Pennsylvania and into West Virginia was beautiful and sunny until we arrived into the Appalachian Mountains. That was when we hit a massive storm that stopped even tracker trailers from moving through the mountain range. I started getting nervous when the winds picked up and our MV1 started swaying side to side (MV1s are very heavy and with four passengers with luggage and a power wheelchair I thought we were in the clear). Thankfully through part craziness and perseverance we continued into the storm, although at times I wasn't sure if we would make it out as it felt like we were running into a tornado. After almost what felt like hours we made it through into Virginia. We passed through Virginia quickly and am now in North Carolina. Where our stay will be short as we are now headed for Florida.

Read our previous entries:

Day 0
Day 1
Day 2