Growing Up in North Dakota

park to national park, starting with the Badlands in North Dakota, where we were christened on our first night by a torrential thunder storm. Things got better then and we traveled to the Black Hills in South Dakota, to Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons, and to Zion, Bryce and the Grand Canyons – and, of course, to many stops between. Finally we stopped in Las Vegas (the only time I’d been there until our trip there a couple years ago) and then off to Los Angeles. I remember the big deal crossing the desert as cars then didn’t have air conditioning. My dad had some kind of cooling canvas bag to hang over the radiator on the front of the car and he’d also rented some kind of water cooler that attached to a window.

We visited my Uncle Dick and Aunt Ann and my Uncle Gerald and Aunt Agnes in Los Angeles (along with all the cousins, of course). Uncle Royce and Aunt Ruth came down from Sunnyvale, too, so there was quite a family reunion. My cousins Sandy and Pam and I were born within three weeks of each other, so it was fun to get to know them. My cousin Karla was a couple years younger. Other than that the cousins were all boys so we didn’t hang out with them much. After Los Angeles, we traveled up to the Bay Area, where obviously my parents decided to move. Then there was the long drive back to North Dakota and our move to the last town we’d live in there – Hope, where I attended 7th grade.