The Final Dash Home

Carlsbad Caverns, the St. Louis Zoo and Driving for 24 hours

01.08.1948 - 24.08.1948

The Indians that we saw at Garden of the Gods were not "from" there - that is from what I remember they were not local indians - those indians lived in pueblos south of Colorado. I remember that after we left the Sand Dunes, we visited their home pueblo - I do not know what the connection was with our family. There is no genetic connection for sure, but when my father was working on Professor Wallin's cabin, the other instructor with him was an Indian.

In any case, the next photos I have are of pueblo dwellings which may have been in Taos.
Overexposed photo of the pueblo

Overexposed photo of the pueblo

Pueblo

Beehive oven

The next to last place we visited was Carlsbad Caverns. This is almost 500 miles south of Colorado. I'm sure the trip took a couple of days.

Carlsbad - buildings from parking lot

Me near the cavern

We went to the cave at sundown in order observe the bats flying from the cave.

Moon Rise (or Set)

This was cool, but hard to photograph.

The next day we went into the caverns. Some of the formations were floodlit
Lighted formations

Lighted formations

Stalactites

Cavern

Big dome in the main cavern

Sideways Waterfall

Carlsbad Emerald Pool

Some of them had names

Elk head

Same without flashlight

Now we were on our way home. Our next objective was St. Louis which was over 1000 miles from Carlsbad. We visited one of my dad's old girlfriends

Hazel and her husband - Dad's old girlfriend

someplace in Oklahoma or Texas and I think we also stopped - maybe at Fort Sill to see some of the family that had adopted my grandfather. But I have no photos of them. I remember crossing the vast hot and boring expanses of Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas on the way to Missouri. Our parents were going to take us to the zoo.

In the spring of 1946 or 1947 my parents left us with our maternal grandmother while they went to meetings in St. Louis. At that time, they discovered that in those days the St. Louis zoo had something like circus acts with the animals. So we stopped to go to the zoo.
Elephant act

Elephant act

Ponies ridden by monkeys

Lion act

The zoo was our last stop before home.

We had been gone several months. Now my dad had to be back for sudden new deadline at the University of Maryland Medical School where he taught. We had less than 48 hours to get from St Louis to Baltimore - over 900 miles without any interstates or limited access highways. I think we went back partly on the Pennsylvania Turnpike which was fairly new and we thought it would be faster than driving back on US 40 through the mountains of Western Maryland although it was a little longer.

My parents did the driving in shifts. My dad made the back seat into a level bed. One parent and one child would sleep while the other parent would drive with a child in the passenger seat beside him. The child's job was to read the map (how far to the next town, did we have to make a turn to stay on the correct highway) and talk to the driver to keep him or her awake. I directed my dad. My sister read the map for my mother. We did stop to eat and get gas (and go to the bathroom). We drove this way for over 20 hours. We did make it back in time.

Our next big trip was in 1950 when our parents took us to Europe

Posted by greatgrandmaR 20:50 Archived in USA

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Comments

I think we also drove on the Pennsylvania Turnpike when it was new, but more often we took the train (the B&O) to Washington D.C. when we went to visit our cousins.

by Nemorino

After this trip, I think we always went up to the Pennsylvania turnpike when we headed west. But I don't think that happened again (that we went west instead of north or south) until I was looking at colleges in 1954. I know we took the train to Colorado at least once during the war, and of course we used the trains in Europe. But we didn't often take the train in the US>

by greatgrandmaR

Aside from the B&O, I can recall a few other long train trips in the US, but not very many, now that you mention it. When I was very young, my mother and brother and I took a sleeping car train on the C&NW to northern Wisconsin. I suppose my father couldn't get off work that year. Later I had two round-trips Chicago-New York on the New York Central, and two round-trips Chicago-Raton NM on the Santa Fe. Plus one I had completely forgotten about until just now: on my first day in the army, they put a bunch of us on an overnight train (with sleeping cars) from Chicago to Fort Knox KY for basic training.

by Nemorino

Did you know that in 1860, Baltimore had five separate railroads but not one passed through the city due to local ordinances? The Northern Central Railroad came to northern Baltimore. The Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore terminated on the east side of town, and the Baltimore and Ohio stopped on the southern edge. To get from PW&B to B&O's Camden station the cars were disconnected from the engine, hitched to a team of horses, and pulled through the city.

I know my maternal grandmother frequently took my mom and her brother south on the train to her home in NC. But for us - except for trips to Colorado during the war when gas was rationed, we traveled by car. We spent the summers in Woods Hole on Cape Cod and I know my parents rode bikes around town but I don't think there was a train station closer than Falmouth. When I was coming home from Norfolk I would have to take the bus. Ditto when we lived in Key West. The train was gone by the time we lived there.

by greatgrandmaR

I'm pretty sure the pueblo in your photos is Taos (have a look at my photos of it here: https://toonsarahvt.travellerspoint.com/179/)

Hard to imagine now that a zoo would have that sort of circus act, isn't it? Or that anyone would want to go and see them! But I know when we were kids we watched plenty of circuses on TV with elephants and other animals performing and didn't think about it

by ToonSarah

Thank you for the identification of the pueblos.

We rode on elephants and camels in the Whipsnade zoo in 1950 - I am sure they don't do that now.
I've been to the circus in person several times - I have photos of my daughter at the circus in 1961, and we went to the circus museum in Sarasota in c 1967.

by greatgrandmaR

Yes, there's an old photo of me in one of the family albums, riding an elephant at Whipsnade - must have been taken in the early 60s

by ToonSarah

I'm glad to have a confirmation of Whipsnade - there's nothing on the web about it now.

by greatgrandmaR

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