My Dad's pictures from a 1948 trip from MD to CO

Next we visited the Great Sand Dunes.
Sand dunes in the distance-I'm in the foreground


Sand dunes in the distance-I'm in the foreground

The Sand Dunes are on the other side of the Rockies from Silver Cliff, but there is no direct road through the mountains. You had to either go up to Salida or down around to Gardner and around Blanca Peak.
Sand dunes against the Sangre de Cristos

Sand dunes against the Sangre de Cristos

Since we were already in Uravan near Nucha, we just had to come east. At the time I was told that the ocean once deposited the sand, but I know now that was not accurate. The dunes developed from sand left behind after prehistoric lakes receded and blew towards a low curve in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The park contains the tallest sand dunes in North America (750' high at an elevation of 8,700' above sea level).

A visit to the Sand Dunes (like a visit to the Garden of the Gods and to Silver Cliff) a family tradition when we are in Colorado.
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Sand dunes


Sand dunes

My dad took my mom on their honeymoon and she said there was an electrical storm and her hair stood up straight on her head. Nothing like that happened this time.
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Sand dunes with tiny people on the top

Sand dunes with tiny people on the top

President Hoover signed a bill to make the Great Sand Dunes a National Monument in 1932, but they weren't made a National Park until 2004.
This is where the photo of the flower in the sand was taken
 
Sliding down the dunes

Sliding down the dunes

My sister and I had fun sliding down the sand hills, like we did in previous years on the Cape Cod sand dunes (14 years later President Kennedy would establish the Cape Cod sand dunes as part of the Cape Cod National SeaShore)

After this we left for New Mexico

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.
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Overexposed photo of the pueblo


Overexposed photo of the pueblo


Pueblo

Pueblo

Beehive oven

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

Carlsbad - buildings from parking lot

Me near the cavern

Me near the cavern

We went to the cave at sundown in order observe the bats flying from the cave.
Moon Rise (or Set)

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

Stalactites
 
Some of them had names
Elk head

Elk head

Same without flashlight

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

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

Ponies ridden by monkeys


Lion act

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.
 
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