CALIFORNIA OR BUST: Celebrating the 14th Anniversary of The Intrepid Tourist

The Scheaffer family at the Continental Divide, Colorado, August 1958.

It was fourteen years ago, in April 2011, that I launched The Intrepid Tourist as a platform for my travel writing. Since then I have put up a new post once a week, usually on a Monday. At first, the posts were articles based on my own travel. Over the years the blog has expanded to include posts from family and friends and currently totals more than 700 posts, seen by more than a half a million readers. In honor of this fourteenth anniversary I am posting a chapter from my memoir, Settlement House Girl, about my family’s cross-country trip in 1958 from Minneapolis to California and back. It was the most exciting trip we had ever taken and whetted my appetite to see more of the world.

California or Bust

T

he summer that I am fourteen (1958), our family embarks on an ambitious five week camping trip, packing the six of us into our 1954 Chevrolet Belair sedan for the journey from Minneapolis to California and back.  While my father has a long summer vacation, we don’t have the money to afford expensive trips--staying in hotels and eating in restaurants. The solution is car camping--staying at public campgrounds and cooking our own food.  Prior to that summer my mother had resisted going camping, insisting that it is too much work and not a vacation. But in 1958, my brother Tom is eight and Peter nine and old enough to help out. Steve and I have learned camping skills at overnights and cookouts as campers at Camp Bovey.

We buy two tents, sleeping bags, a camp stove, kerosene lantern, and set of nesting kettles. To prepare for the trip, we practice setting up camp in the backyard, much to our neighbors’ amusement as they watch from the other side of the fence. We each have a role. Keeping time with a stopwatch, my father directs the action: unfolding and spreading out the tent, pounding the stakes, erecting the umbrella support poles, propping up the rain flap. By the end of July we have the routine down pat and are ready to go.

Never before have any of us seen mountains, deserts, or the ocean. We feel like ancient explorers ready to discover a new land. Leaving Minneapolis and the rolling farmland of southern Minnesota behind, we cross the South Dakota prairie (with an obligatory stop at Wall Drug for photos and souvenirs), to our first campsite in the Black Hills, where we marvel at the giant heads on Mount Rushmore and the herds of shaggy bison roaming the plains.

Our next stop is Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, pitching our tents in the thin Alpine air. We hike along the mountain trails and get caught in a sudden snowstorm, amazed to encounter snow in summer.  We spot plump pikas harvesting grass to sun dry before they store it in underground burrows for winter. We watch water ouzels forage at the bottom of icy streams fed by melting mountain snow. I sit on a rock and stick my bare toes in the rushing water, but they quickly turn numb--which makes me wonder how the birds stay warm.

Caroline and her brothers at Mesa Verde.

From Rocky Mountain National Park we drive across the Continental Divide to the town of Montrose in western Colorado for a family reunion with my cousins.  From there we go to Mesa Verde National Park, pitching our tent at the edge of the mesa and, like the ancient cliff dwellers, cook our food over an open fire. It is easy to imagine our campsite as a place where the Anasazi might have tilled the ground to plant corn and beans or hunted deer and wild turkeys with bows and arrows. As we gaze into the canyon below we see a complex of square buildings built into the cliff wall a thousand years ago. My brothers and I delight in scrambling up and down the ladders of the cliff dwellings and investigating the open rooms. Protected from wind and weather by the overhanging rocks, the basic structure has changed little over time.

Inside the museum I peer at fine baskets, intricately decorated pots, carved stone and bone tools and other artifacts, and wonder about the ancient Americans who made them and why around 1300 AD they abandoned their homes. In the museum shop, I buy a small painting of a dancing figure by Navajo artist Harrison Begay. Outside, on the patio, a Native American man is constructing an elaborate sand painting, pouring colored grains to make tiny figures and geometric designs. We leave before the “painting” is complete, knowing that it is temporary, meant for tourists to see the artist at work. I learn that according to Navajo tradition, such paintings are part of healing ceremonies, destroyed after the ceremony is over.  

From Mesa Verde we head to Southern California to visit our cousins in a Los Angeles suburb. Our car has no air conditioning, so we cross the desert at night. Stars sparkle overhead in the clear, dry air as we speed down the highway. I can't imagine that anything could possibly live in such a barren, alien land. We arrive at my cousins’ house long past midnight and pitch our tents in their backyard. 

In Southern California I have my first view of the ocean and of waves taller than I am. Although I have been to Lake Michigan, a body of water so big that one can’t see to the other side, the Pacific is almost incomprehensible in its vastness. In tide pools along the shore I discover sea urchins, tiny crabs, and bright red sea stars. When I venture into the water to swim, a wave catches me by surprise and knocks me over. I can taste the salt on my tongue.

At the Minnesota state line.

On our return trip to Minneapolis we take a more northern route, stopping at the Grand Canyon; Salt Lake City; and Yellowstone National Park. It is one thing to read about ancient rock formations, the Mormon Temple, boiling rock pools and giant geysers, and another to see them in real life. This trip gives us all a taste of the infinite variety of our world and whets my appetite to see more of it.

Arriving home in Minneapolis.

SETTLEMENT HOUSE GIRL: Growing Up in the 1950s at North East Neighborhood House, Minnepolis, Minnesota is available at Amazon (paperback or ebook) or to order at your favorite bookstore. ISBN 9798864903285