Pine, COLO. (KDVR) – If you are driving my car about 50 minutes west outside the center of Denver, you can find yourself in the Standon State Park Park.
The garden size is more than 4000 acres and has 32 miles of tracks, but what makes it unique is the access program that helps to get anyone who wants to enter nature.
“Everyone knows someone with a kind of disease and wants to go out to the park,” said Zach Taylor, director of the Stonton Governmental Park.
The path chair program started in 2017 and gives people with any disability or other logic the opportunity to ride or move in the track chair on the garden paths.
Taylor said: “We take them to up to the Mesa Creek Canyon and to some waterfalls, along with our fishing basins to allow our individuals to go to hunting,” Taylor said.
The program started when the Standon State Park garden received some donations that led to the purchase of the first two chairs. Now over the years they have five in total, the chairs cost about $ 18,000 each.
“In about three to four months (in 2017), they collected more than $ 40,000 for the program,” Taylor said.
In total, chairs can travel 9-10 miles from the garden. Taylor explained that it was created after the idea of a snow cart in order to be durable and can deal with sharp and rocky terrain.
Taylor said: “Our paths are dirt, they are rocky, and there is an unequal terrain,” Taylor said. “For them, it is an opportunity for someone who suffers from limited physical disabilities or severe disabilities to go out here and go on a picnic,” said Taylor.
The program has already started in the past few years, and Friday, Saturday and Sunday’s increases between June to October. But they start taking reservations early. If you want to register, you can here.
“They can reach 8 to 9 miles and up to 25 feet,” Taylor said.
Last winter, the program received a donation to buy a new chair, which means that one of their older chairs will be donated to another park in Colorado, either looking to start the track chair program or contain an existing program.
Taylor said: “There are seven parks in Colorado that now we have and we are already working to donate an old one to Steamboat State so that they can start a program there this summer,” Taylor said.
They depend on donations and volunteers. Especially volunteers according to Taylor. He now said that they have between 30 to 40 who help in height, but the more volunteers increase, the better. He stated that the volunteers help get more people on the tracks. If you want to volunteer, you can here.
Taylor said: “In the eight years, we saw more than 2,500 people who managed to go out for long distances they hadn’t had,” Taylor said.