Dad vows to take disabled daughter to all 50 US states by age 18

(FOXNews.com)

(FOX News) - Most people who use a wheelchair prefer smooth pavement, but 16-year-old Kellisa Cain has always wanted the ground beneath her to be rocky, bumpy and “crazy,” her father said.

Kellisa, who lives in Jacksonville, Fla., with her mom, Lisa, her sister, Laurel, and her father, Chris, has hydrocephalus and cerebral palsy— conditions that have left her developmentally delayed, prone to seizures, and reliant on assistive devices. Doctors didn’t expect Kellisa would survive long after birth, but when she did, Chris promised her that despite any potential health complications in the future, he’d make sure she lived the most normal life possible. He also vowed to show her the world. 

Since then, the wheels of Kellisa’s jog strollers have touched the soil at Great Smoky National Park, the red clay at national parks in Sedona and the Grand Canyon, and the grass on an island off Lake Superior. She’s visited 47 of the 50 states that her father wants her to see by the time she is 18.

“We started out with just the wheelchair, and I’ll be honest with you: We were on trails we had no business being on in a wheelchair,” Chris, 44, told FoxNews.com. Outdoors, he said, Kellisa “comes alive.”

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