Summer time often means travel time. This includes those of us providing senior home care for our aging parents, with and without those parents. I, too, am doing a bit of traveling off and on this summer and am keeping my eyes open for helps and hints to share with all of you.

On one such trip, I learned some important questions to ask every time I make a hotel or motel reservation. “Do you have more than one floor, and if so, do you have at least two working elevators?” I look for two, in case one is broken. Would you believe, I learned this because of a repeat stay at one of my favorite places. It’s a delightful Inn in small town America, very up-to-date and spiffy, and even used as the area’s primary meeting and conference center.

We’d stayed there several times before but always had ground floor rooms. On this particular trip, I was traveling alone, which was good! I got in late and exhausted. After registering, I got my room key, realized it was on the second floor and asked where the elevator was. What a shock to discover they had no elevator! They had no other room that night so I had to lug two suitcases and a heavy box up a flight of stairs, thinking how grateful I was my senior mom was not with me!

Once all my luggage was deposited, I did OK with the stairs since my arthritis was behaving itself nicely. It would have been a different story, though, for an elderly adult. As you can imagine, we now make sure to request downstairs rooms every time we stay there.

On a later trip, I traveled with my grandkids and stayed at a different, family hotel. Most of their sites are all inside with elevators. This happened to be one of their older locations and is set up similar to more traditional apartment buildings. Again, we ended up with an upstairs room requiring using stairs. In addition, this particular set-up was a larger unit with a living room and loft, and included stairs inside the unit as well. We did fine with it. In fact, it was a big help for our particular needs on that trip. If I had been traveling with my senior mom or my arthritis was flaring up, however, it would have been much harder.

I can assure you, I now call the individual location when making reservations, and ask about the room set-ups and stair situation before finalizing my reservation. If you will be traveling with those you provide senior home care to, have a wonderful trip, and be sure to check up on those stairs.