In this family, an adventurous spirit is deeply rooted
What is passed on to us from our grandparents? Physical features like a similar smile, memories, and keepsakes, but what about an adventurous spirit? As a young girl, trips to Grandma’s house (on my father’s side) meant a long car ride followed by good food, swinging high on a tire swing, exploring her large backyard in Bessemer, PA, walking around a water tower, washing our hands with the best smelling orange Dial soap, and a house that seemed like it was from another time. Decorated somewhere between the 50’s and 70’s with browns and oranges and greens and a light in the kitchen that looked like there were slices of honeydew trapped inside. We ate Sunday dinners together and she made the best chocolate chip cookies in the world that can never be duplicated.
When we are young, our grandparents are special people but somewhat of a mystery. Why are they old and still so much fun? Why do they keep giving us savings bonds every holiday? This isn’t what I want (30 years later, I love savings bonds)! If we’re lucky, we get to know them more as we get older. We hear more stories and maybe have a better idea of who they were in their younger years. Unfortunately, I never got that opportunity with my Grandma, she passed away when I was still a young girl, with the promise that we would make chocolate chip cookies again one day.
I never thought of her as an adventurer. I remember a trip to Baltimore with her where I lost my mind, crying in terror at the giant whale skeleton that hung between many floors in The National Aquarium. I remember her going on an Alaskan cruise and bringing back a stuffed husky dog for my younger sister. That trip seemed like a pretty big deal to my young mind. Alaska was so far away -- and so cold! But was Grandma an explorer? Probably not.
As I got older, my Dad started taking us on road trips each summer. Planning routes between cities in different parts of the country, eventually making it out to the west coast when we were a bit older. He told us stories of some of the road trips he took as a boy with his parents and brothers, seeing many parts of the United States along with some National Parks.
When my Dad and I started visiting National Parks together in 2016, he gave me a handmade photo album with brown paper pages and a wooden cover labeled Snaps, that he thought I’d like to keep. I spend a lot of time documenting my travels in photo albums, scrapbooks, and my vacation journals, so this was incredibly special. Inside were the photos from my Grandma’s trip out west in the summer of 1940. Just under a month of travel captured in 84 pictures, carefully placed and labeled in her perfect school teacher handwriting.
A trip of this size and length is a lot for me to imagine now, much less for two women traveling alone in 1940. A little over a year before the US joined in WWII, this period in time always fascinates me. Cue images from Nicholas Sparks' The Notebook, filled with the cutest dresses and outfits, classic cars, and hair done just so. But you can’t quite imagine even the grown up version of the character Allie heading off to explore the west...can you?
Over the years and the more I’ve traveled, Snaps has become one of my most treasured keepsakes. A girls’ road trip in 1940 traveling all over the western part of the United States with her friend. When my Dad gave me the book, he told me that they didn’t even tell their parents that they were going (to keep them from worrying), but so much of the story was a mystery. I recently did a bit of sleuthing and asked my family if they knew anything more about the trip. I was able to learn a few more details.
My Grandma, Frances, was 27 when she traveled out west on a wild road trip that lasted at least a month, visiting some of the biggest names in National Parks. Her friend, Mick, seems to have been the mastermind. Friends and roommates in a boarding house, they were both teachers, and Mick had gotten married in secret. She wasn’t ready to give up teaching just yet and so she had to keep her marriage a secret because married women weren’t allowed to teach at the time. Frances was still unmarried, but had met my Grandpa, Spencer a few years before at the drug store he worked at, and later owned. The teachers from the high school would go there after school for fountain drinks.
So, Mick suggested a grand summer trip out west as somewhat of a last hoorah as roommates and friends. They set out sometime in mid-late June and Snaps’ first images are when they reached the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs, CO, June 25, 1940. From there they looped slightly north and headed west toward California with stops in Salt Lake City and Lake Tahoe on their way to Yosemite National Park. The views, especially in the black and white photographs are amazing, capturing landmarks like Half Dome and Yosemite Valley in beautiful detail.
In California, the girls visited the redwoods in Sequoia National Park and took pictures of their car in Tunnel Tree, like so many tourists that were exploring National Parks at the time -- and still to this day. Photos like these are a reminder of the timelessness of these iconic places, preserved for generations, thanks to their designation as National Parks.
Frances and Mick headed down the Pacific Coast from San Francisco to Monterey, Santa Monica to Los Angeles, before heading east to Nevada, Lake Mead and the Boulder Dam, and on to Santa Claus, Arizona before they arrived at the Grand Canyon. In Snaps, some of my favorite photos are the people they met or saw along the way, like the great picture of two Native American children with a saddled mule in the Painted Desert in Arizona, and a man with a donkey in or near Santa Claus.
The photo book ends in Thermopolis, Wyoming after Frances and Mick’s visit to Yellowstone with lakes, waterfalls, and the famed Old Faithful captured in beautiful detail with onlookers in the foreground of the photos like a vintage travel poster. Another favorite photo of mine is the handsome “Lone Ranger” on the final page, somewhat goofy or perhaps flirting with his hat crooked to the side, mouth open as though he may have been laughing. The adventure of a lifetime. I would’ve loved to hear stories from this trip from my Grandma, herself. I’m sure there were many stories to tell.
At least 3,400 miles traveled (Colorado to Wyoming loop) based on my map research with modern highways and roads. Snaps leaves off on July, 20,1940 in Wyoming with the rest of the adventure, beginning and end, all a mystery. Is there another album, volume two or more out there somewhere? I would love to find out. It is hard to imagine capturing a journey of that size in just 84 pictures, when most of my week long trips have several hundred.
Even if it remains unknown, their story is fascinating and inspiring. My Grandma, the adventuress, climbing rocks and throwing snowballs in saddle shoes and curled hair, visiting the great National Parks of the west. So the spirit of adventure is hereditary, passed down from my Grandma to my Dad, and on to me. Until next time, Live Wildly.