Longmire doesn’t let Multiple Sclerosis (MS) slow her down

by Mia Taylor

By the time she reached her forties, Sylvia Longmire had already checked off all the global destinations on her travel bucket list. Vienna, check. Sydney, also check. Dublin and Cape Town, check and check. Reykjavík, Berlin, Singapore….The list of her travels goes on and on, totalling some 60 countries and 264 cities (at last count).

“My very last bucket list item in the US was Mount Rushmore and I created a six-week, 6,500-mile road trip with my two sons centred around visiting Mount Rushmore, back in 2021,” says Longmire, who’s now approaching her 51st birthday. “It was absolutely epic.”

Longmire’s addiction to travel can be traced back to childhood and the road trips her family embarked upon every few years between their home in South Florida and a family friend’s house in Canada. By the time Longmire turned 16, she had already visited an impressive 22 states thanks to those meandering family journeys.

Now, as a life-altering disease attacks her body and she slowly loses mobility, Longmire continues to travel the world with abandon, while working to raise awareness about disabled travellers.

A diagnosis that changed everything

Over the course of an eight-year career in the U.S. Air Force and after that, working as a Special Agent, Longmire continued travelling the world extensively. And yet, Longmire, who travels solo, doesn’t hesitate to reveal during the course of conversation that she continues to be wracked with fear each time she leaves on a new trip.

“I have anxiety every time I travel,” she says. “I may look brave, but I’m scared every time.”

In Longmire’s case, the emotional vulnerability and transparency are especially meaningful.

Back in 2005, she was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS). As a result, her ability to walk started to deteriorate. Initially, she learned to travel with a walker. As the disease took its toll, she shifted to using an electric scooter. Amid each of these transitions, Longmire’s new reality became clearer: The clock was ticking on her ability to travel the world freely.

MS is a progressive, debilitating disease for which there’s no cure – meaning it’s unclear how much longer Longmire’s body will allow her to continue to be mobile.

Yet, like each of the women we have interviewed for this series about bold, solo adventuresses in their 50s, Longmire’s zeal for travel and her go-getter lifestyle is a deeply inspiring story.

She’s working on her bucket list

2016: 19 trips, 28 cities, 5 countries.

2017: 21 trips, 38 cities, 18 countries.

2018: 15 trips, 40 cities, 24 countries

In the years following her MS diagnosis, Longmire’s globetrotting took on an awe-inspiring and almost dizzying pace, with 2019 being her most prolific year as a traveller: 24 trips, 24 countries, 64 cities.

Some of the highlights of those years of exploration include making it to Dubai (a 16-hour flight from her home in Florida), where Longmire visited the iconic and towering Burj Khalifa, went shopping in a souk and off-roading in the desert, where she was carried to the top of a sand dune. It was a trip that Longmire says gave her a great deal of confidence as a disabled traveller.

Alaska was another particularly memorable destination on Longmire’s list. She visited via cruise (on two separate occasions). Even though Longmire required a scooter to get around due to her progressing MS, she was able to participate in a helicopter ride to take in Alaska’s beauty from above during both trips. Equally memorable, the helicopter touched down on a glacier.

The final journey on Longmire’s “official” bucket list took her to Cape Town, South Africa. “I got to live the dream of a 20-minute helicopter flight along the south coast with an aerial view of Table Mountain,” Longmire recalls.

But she’s not done yet

To clarify, however, just because Longmire completed her bucket list doesn’t mean she’s done travelling. Not by a long shot.

Last year, for instance, she took 19 trips to 5 countries and 32 cities. And to date in 2025, she’s recorded 13 trips to 6 countries and 18 cities.

The Florida resident will mark her upcoming 51st birthday this year with a visit to London and Paris. A major Formula One fan, Longmire also plans to visit Las Vegas this coming November to take in a race.

Which brings us back to Longmire’s admission that each time she leaves the house to begin a new trip, she’s wracked with fear. If it’s not already abundantly clear, that fear is still not an obstacle.

“I’m an analytical person, and I have anxiety every time I travel. I may look brave, I may look courageous, but no, I am scared every time I leave the house,” Longmire explains. “So, for me personally, the more information I have about a destination, about the hotel, about the transportation and whatever the logistics are, the calmer I feel.”

That’s merely one of the important tips Longmire has to offer other solo women travellers.

A new mission

Longmire has built a vibrant and fulfilling life for herself, thanks to her ongoing travels, as well as work as an actor, director, producer, and brand ambassador. She also has a successful writing career, with two books in print, Cartel and Border Insecurity.

Her unique life journey and status as an accomplished traveller have also allowed Longmire to accumulate a great deal of wisdom about successfully navigating the globe and all of its uncertainties as a solo traveller who is disabled. The knowledge fuels Longmire’s current mission to raise awareness in the travel industry about disabled travellers.

“Although it’s getting better, the travel sector is very slow to recognize the amount of money individuals with disabilities are willing to spend for travel experiences,” says Longmire.

“You go on some cruises and there are a ton of wheelchair users and scooter users …but you’ll never see a wheelchair user or a scooter user in an advertisement for a cruise company, which is crazy because it’s one of their biggest demographics,” Longmire continues. “They’re still not marketing directly to us.”

Longmire has set her sights on changing that marketing reality. She wants to see cruise advertisements that are truly representative and include wheelchair users.

Words of wisdom for women travelling with MS and other mobility issues

Longmire is also equally focused on encouraging other individuals with disabilities to overcome their fears related to travel, which is often based on anxiety about the unknown. She says fear is the number one obstacle that holds disabled travellers back. It isn’t money. It isn’t a lack of equipment to get around. It isn’t their bodies.

To that end, Longmire has several tips for individuals who would like to travel with disabilities.

The first is this: Don’t let fear stop you from travelling back because “what is waiting for you at the other end of that fear is so amazing.”

Longmire is speaking from experience – both about the fear part and the rewards. For instance, as a disabled traveller, she was terrified of using public transportation, worried that she would get stranded somewhere along the way. Perhaps a station not designed to accommodate disabled travellers, or at a station with a broken elevator that would leave her stranded on a subway platform. (The latter scenario actually happened to Longmire.)

Another version of the local “baby steps” Longmire suggests involves taking a cheap budget flight somewhere in your home state, simply to get familiar with the experience of flying as a traveller with disabilities.

She also stresses the importance of exploring domestically first while building courage as a traveller with disabilities, before venturing internationally.

Having a well-thought-out backup plan at the ready to address emergencies or the inevitable travel snafus is another important travel hack that Longmire relies upon.

“I always have a backup plan. And that came in handy when I was in Chicago about a month ago, “I took a train, and the only elevator from the train platform was broken.”

Longmire says she had long ago thought through what to do should such a scenario ever arrive: Get back on the train and take it to another station to find a working elevator. And once back at street level at the new station, use a cab to get where she needed to go.

Each time Longmire has pushed through her fears, completing yet another trip, it’s been a truly rewarding experience.

On the other end of her own fears, Longmire has consistently found experiences that renew her faith in humanity.

“I’m a cynic,” says Longmire. “I’m 50 years old. For 15 years, I was one of the world’s top experts on Mexico’s drug war, which is very depressing. You see everything from weapons trafficking, drug trafficking, and human smuggling; it’s awful. And I was in law enforcement in the Air Force…I’ve been in fields where I just got to see the worst of humanity.”

“But when I travel, and I’ve travelled literally all over the world, I am continually moved and touched by the kindness of strangers, especially in foreign countries,” Longmire adds. “They just want you to enjoy their country, and they want you to have a good impression of the people, and they want you to have a good time.”

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