So that's Mom at 33 and me at 10 and apparently Gram taking the photos while Grampa had a cigarette--or maybe just sat in the car, if there was a fire danger. I would've traded two of the bear photos for some of my grandparents. But that's the end of the 1948 trip photos, all I have. As I mentioned finishing the last entry, it still looks like Yellowstone Park, but I don't know. It's obviously still out West.
I have to say that our national parks are genuine treasures, despite the fact that the corrupt administration we now have to cope with has falsified all sorts of scientific and environmental reports in order to open all kinds of federal lands to private profiteering, that good ol' boy cronyism the Demented Texan excels at, not to mention his savagely slashed budget for the national parks. The Iraq black hole has already cost over $455 billion--is there any mission accomplished yet for the oil boobies???--and the Demented Texan just requested $45 billion more for Iraq and Afghanistan. Obviously, he is not just a high roller but stratospheric.
But at least we have the system established, not yet ruined by the tawdry commercialism of, say, the Black Hills or the Ozarks or other scenic splendors barely visible behind and under billboards, souvenir shops, fast-food franchises, motel chains, now gambling casinos. And the parks are uniquely beautiful: Yosemite, Glacier, Crater Lake, Great Smokies, Yellowstone, Arches, Zion, Big Bend, Badlands, Bandelier, Bent's Old Fort, Big Hole, Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Bryce Canyon, Canyon de Chelly, Chaco Culture, Capitol Reef, Carlsbad Caverns, Cedar Breaks, Craters of the Moon, El Morro, Devils Tower, Dinosaur, Effigy Mounds, El Malpais, Fort Laramie, Fort Larned, Fort Union, Fossil Butte, Gila Cliff Dwellings, Grand Canyon, Grand Teton, Great Basin, Great Sand Dunes, Guadalupe Mountains, Hovenweep, Lassen Volcanic, Kings Canyon, Mesa Verde, Mammoth Cave, Little Bighorn Battlefield, Natchez, Mount Rushmore, Mount Ranier, North Cascades, Petrified Forest, Natural Bridges, Sequoia, Redwood, Scotts Bluff, Vicksburg, White Sands, to name most--but not all--I've traveled to with great pleasure. And we badly need better stewardship of them. They are crucial to our history and our well-being.
I should also point out that we were traveling when gasoline was 25 cents a gallon, maybe up to 35, and most roads not federal highways were gravel. In that era service stations were just that: when you drove up, you expected to have the windshield washed, the oil and possibly the water checked, the tires checked if they looked low, all for free, with a smile and some friendly chatter, while the attendant was running the gas. Indeed, you were not allowed to pump your own. Cars had no air-conditioning for protection against either heat or dust, just windows that rolled up or down, with small slanted ones for the front-seat passengers, besides the regular windows, that could direct the breeze inward. No entertainment but each other and the radio, no cassette or CD players, certainly no booming sound systems. We carried extra fuses, a tire pump, certainly a jack, a tool kit, maybe some extra quarts of oil, had full-sized spare tires and even possibly spare tubes for them. The seats were removable. In fact, no kidnapper could've put someone in the trunk and expected him/her to stay there, because the back seat could be taken out (or kicked forward in the felony case) for direct trunk access. Of course, seats were all what are now called bench seats, no individualized or bucket seats with fixtures between. Flat tires were more common, as were headlights damaged by flying gravel, though neither was hard to take care of, and service stations had stocks of tubes, patches, headlights, radiator belts. (I couldn't begin to change a tire on my pickup now--I'd have to call an AAA outlet--whereas I was very good at it as a teenager. Indeed, Mom made me learn well before I was old enough to drive.) Oh, yeah, road maps were plentiful and free, part of the service.
I don't know how we got across Wyoming except by the routes usually used now. I do know we saw the capitol at Cheyenne, part of Gram's insistent capitol-seeing. Many years later I went through Wyoming's capitol, lovely stained glass ceilings and painted murals, worth touring and something Gram would've relished. We had to pass by Scotts Bluff (which I have since hiked up when we had a court reporters state convention out there) and Chimney Rock because we went on to Lincoln, where we saw not just the capitol but the state fair. I guess the adults figured on finishing up in fine fashion, and it seems we did.
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