Cary Behle was diagnosed with dementia nine years ago, at 75. His wife Meg did not want to stop traveling with him, so they did not. Australia, South Africa, Sicily, the Caribbean, Dubai. In 2021 the San Diego couple took a cruise to Antarctica. “He would have a smile on his face even if he didn’t know where we were,” she says. For at least five years he did not know she was his wife. “But he knew I was his person.” He died three years ago, at 80.
That is the whole article in one family. As the country ages, more people are being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and other dementias, and for many of them travel is the part of life they least want to give up. The Alzheimer’s Association counts about 7.4 million Americans 65 and older living with Alzheimer’s dementia, roughly one in nine. A decade ago it was 5.4 million.
What the doctor actually says
Dr. Verna Porter, a geriatric neurologist at the Pacific Neuroscience Institute in Santa Monica, says more of her patients ask to travel, and she often encourages them. Earlier diagnosis means today’s patients are healthier and more active than the patients of twenty years ago. The best candidates have mild cognitive impairment or early-stage dementia, still enjoy new experiences, tolerate a change in routine and recognize their caregiver.
Her rules are simple. Familiar destinations. Direct flights or short travel days. Simple itineraries that keep medication on schedule and leave room for rest. She is more cautious when a patient wanders, has repeated episodes of confusion, or has unstable medical problems. “The goal of travel changes,” she says. “It is no longer about checking destinations off a list. It is about preserving meaningful experiences with family and friends while minimizing stress.”
When it works, and when it doesn’t
Elite Cruises & Vacations, founded by a geriatric-neurology nurse in Hobart, Indiana, runs dementia-friendly cruises. It picks midsize ships with quiet meeting spaces, assigns one trained support person to each family, keeps a registered nurse available and runs support groups for the caregivers. It carried 310 guests last year, some of them repeat travelers.
Molly O’Reilly McGhee, 61, found the company after a bad weekend. She had taken her mother Eunice, 84, to a hotel on Lake Erie. Molly stepped into the shower. When she came out her mother was in the lobby with the security guard. It happened twice more in three days. On the Elite cruise in February her mother still asked “Where are we?” but was engaged and watching everything. Asked afterward what she liked best, Eunice said, “Being with family.” They are booking Alaska next.
The counterexample is honest, too. Andy Bernadett and his wife Kim Zwick ran an accounting and financial-planning firm in Grass Valley, California, and rode a tandem bicycle across the country. After her diagnosis in 2022 they finally took the Alaska cruise they had talked about for a decade. She did not enjoy it. She disliked the cold and found the group dinners awkward. “It was a struggle for her and a struggle for me,” he says. She died two months after the trip, at 59.
| Stage | What the neurologist says | What the families did |
|---|---|---|
| Mild impairment / early stage | Go. Familiar places, direct flights, medication on schedule. | London, then a Mediterranean cruise; a camel in Morocco with the kids. |
| Moderate, with wandering | Caution. Travel changes from sightseeing to time with family. | A supported cruise with a nurse aboard and one helper per family. |
| Advanced or unstable | Usually not. The stress outweighs the memory. | A water-park slide and a lifeguard; the moment a family knew. |
The trip is the easy part to pay for
Julia Lynn, 69, a former Kansas state senator, was diagnosed with early-stage Alzheimer’s in late 2022. Her family booked London in 2025 and a cruise this April through Spain, Italy, Malta, Greece and Montenegro. Her daughter-in-law, a travel adviser, says the trips made a difference. “She knows she has it,” she says. The trips are a way of not letting the disease own the calendar.
The money side is where a planner earns the fee. A memory-care bed typically runs around $8,000 a month, the same figure that showed up in Tuesday’s story about a retired teacher whose savings were drained. Travel comes out of the same pot, and it has to be spent first, because the window closes. The families in this piece who did it well had three things in place before the passports: a durable power of attorney, a healthcare directive and a trusted contact on file at every account. Those are the documents that let a spouse or a daughter sign, pay and decide when the patient no longer can.