SUMMER VACATION 1950

With the Spring Valley property sold, no place to live, and orders to join my dad in Guam still missing, Mom decided to pack us up and take a train trip to Fort Collins, Colorado to visit Grandma Marie and her third husband Frank Lomicka. Marie outlived her first two husbands -- and Frank, for that matter.  I remember Union Station in Los Angeles because there were so many trains with colorful paint jobs.  The train crossed over the Rockies and along the gorgeous Green River to Union Pacific Station in Cheyenne, Wyoming where Frank and Marie met us and drove us back to Fort Collins.

Union Pacific Station • Cheyenne, Wyoming

I can only see three candles, but this must be Vicki's
fourth birthday on August 2, 1950 at Grandma Marie's

  

I guess Frank was still working as a Conductor for the Union Pacific, because he didn't come along when Mom and Marie and us kids loaded up Grandma's Packard and headed north to Fergus County, Montana where the Benes Family homesteaded in the 1890s and my mom was born on December 16, 1920.  The photos above show the motel we stayed at in Buffalo, Wyoming and Vicki and me in -- I believe -- Roundup, Montana.

The cabins are still there.  It's now the Blue Gables Motel.

  

Vicki and I on horseback in Montana.  I had my first and only visit to an outhouse when we spent the night.




Mom takes the wheel of a nice tractor.



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