As I begin this blog to record our travels this summer, I can't help but remember my youth;  when returning to school we were asked how we spent our summer vacations.  I don't recollect ever participating in this exercise, since we normally spent the summer in the yard playing baseball or hide-n-seek until the streetlights came on and everyone had to scurry home.  I suppose I felt that my summer vacations weren't as intoxicating as those who, say, traveled the 60 miles to Niagara Falls.  It was a different era, way different.  Most people in my neighborhood didn't take "vacations".  Oh we weren't deprived, not at all.  There were the trips to Canandaigua Lake where my brothers challenged my swimming skills in order to accompany them all the way out to the diving board, or the occasional bus trip adventure with my sister to visit a favorite cousin in Massachusetts. If you haven't spent a summer on Winthrop Beach or riding a two wheeler down the hill on Lincoln St, with your sister on the handlebars,  you were deprived!  Okay, so maybe the hill wasn't that big, but at the time it sure seemed so.   Mostly however, I remember playing with neighborhood kids; inventing new games, or chasing our dog who continually ran away to the orphanage a few miles away.

Jump ahead half a century (or so...who's counting anyway)  and summers now are quite different.  This year, with grandchildren in tow, we  traveled nearly 6500 miles through 20 states and Canada over a period of 38 days.  Exhausting to think about it now, but as I begin to select images for this blog I remember just how exciting it was and how thankful I am to have had such an opportunity to share the summer with our Grandchildren.   They are growing fast and only too soon will prefer to spend their free time with friends and not the old grandparents. 

This year we walked through the petrified forest, took the tram to the top of the Gateway Arch, rode the carnival rides at Navy Pier, and visited the Grand Canyon.  We reunited  with family  near the old family homestead in Columbus Nebraska and climbed the ruins of Mesa Verde.   I hope that one day they will recall with fondness this summer and all the others we have spent together.

Okay so now that we have seen the 12th century Montezuma Pueblo, can we please go to the gift shop?

 

Searching for gold on Oak Creek Sedona

Believe it or not, they actually got excited about the Petrified Forest eventually

Wait, you mean we have to walk all the way back up there?

Eating ice cream while Grandpa waits in line at the Shedd Aquarium

Hamming it up in front of the TRex Sue exhibit at the Field Museum

Iowa?  We're in Iowa?

Didn't matter where we went, as long as there was a pool waiting at the hotel	!

Visiting with Grammy's friend Carolyn in Kansas City.  She brought us presents!

Breakfast in bed!

Cruisin with cousin Jim in the Model A

On the Becky Thatcher, Mississippi River