41 – Travel

The travels of my ancestors are featured in many of the blogs I wrote (see below); and so I was a bit stumped about what to write about specifically on travel. This last month I have started to inventory my genealogy collection, inspired by Marian Burk Wood's book Planning a Future for Your Family's Past, and I came across a small spiral-bound notepad documenting a bus trip my grandmother Marie Gerhard Kenyon took in 1980 from Wisconsin to California, visiting various people she knew including me. So I think kismet was telling me I had to blog about Grandma's bus trip.

Marie never learned to drive, and was born before automobiles became popular. In her teens and twenties we know she used to enjoy car rides – her diaries from 1916 to 1926 include a lot weekends she would go "autoing" with others for leisure. 

Marie (back seat, driver's side) with her father and siblings, abt. 1914

She also frequented the trains, especially the one between Milwaukee and Fond du Lac, and her honeymoon in June 1918 started with an early morning train trip from Fond du Lac to Minnesota: her wedding was at 5:15 A.M. in order to make the 6:30 A.M. train to Minneapolis!

Marie Gerhard diary entry, 5 Jun 1918

"Take the Greyhound, and leave the driving to us" – I still remember the advertising. Wikipedia has a fascinating history about Greyhound; the company is around still, at least in name, but its heyday is long past due to competition from automobiles. For someone who had raised a family during the Great Depression, the economics were compelling. Marie was not afraid of flying: my father took her to Europe once, but price determined her mode of transport. 

Small spiral bound notepad, 1980 trip log, cover and first page

Google Maps tells me her route to Pasadena would be about 2,160 miles by auto today. It's still possible to take the Greyhound buses: Google shows it takes about 2 days of travel, about the same as in 1980, but taking the train is a few hours shorter.

Marie's route to California, Google Maps (Map data ©2023 Google, INEGI)

Marie's bus trip began in Chicago, in the very early morning, two hours past midnight Friday night; she probably napped Friday evening, and my father, who was a night owl, must have driven her from the suburb where she was visiting him to the downtown Chicago bus station:

Sat. Mar. 15 – 1980. Left Chicago 2 A.M. First stop - for breakfast - 6:45. Restaurant outside Cedar Rapids. Left – 7:40 A.M.

She continued through Iowa during the day (my family had lived in Grinnell for a few years where my dad worked for the city):

Went thru Grinnell; got a glimpse of "City Offices." Des Moines at 9:30 A.M. Stop at 10 A.M. Council Bluffs. Played cards w/a 12-yr. old who with his brother and mother, are moving from Boston to San Francisco. Weather fine – sunny – moderate temperature.

12:45. Stopped in Omaha, Neb. for lunch at Burger King. Bus serviced here – will leave at 3 P.M. 

6:20. Just finished supper at cafeteria near Grand Island, Nebr. 

Big Springs, Nebraska. 

My first trip thru Utah – snow capped mts. Thru Ogden – Arr. Salt Lake 2:20 P.M. Left 2: 45. 

My coach mate from Omaha to Las Vegas is a Meister boy from Fond du Lac. Left Barstow 4 A.M. Tony Meister got off at Las Vegas. [Note: Barstow was after Las Vegas!]

Marie kept track of every expense in the log!

Las Vegas a fabulous sight at 11:30 P.M. – all ablaze with multi-colored light from far and wide. There for 30 minutes. Majority of passengers remained in Las Vegas. The few left on bus went to Montclair, San Bernadino, L.A., and San Diego.

Mon. 6 A.M. Arr. in Pasadena to find station closed until 8:30, so I walked 2 blocks to a good restaurant. Breakfast $1.58 at Barstow, Breakfast in Pasadena $6.20.

Marie visited with an old friend, Goldes, in Pasadena for two weeks, noting occasional events in her log. On Saturday, March 29, she took another bus trip up the coast to Salinas. She doesn't say why she stopped in Salinas for a day and night, except she did enjoy the 17 mile scenic drive along the ocean in Carmel. On Sunday morning she took another short bus trip up to San Jose to visit me, one of her grandchildren. I had moved to California almost 3 years before from Illinois, and was renting a room in San Jose from a workmate (Joe is my family nickname):

Sat, March 29. Fare to Salinas – 22.00. Beautiful 17 mi. drive along ocean.

Sun 1:25. Bus fare to San Jose - $4.58. Joe and I [had] steak dinner in Pruneyard (huge mall). 

Drove to Mary Kolander's. Sherry & husband there from Antioch, Ca. Strawberry birthday cake.

Slept on Joe's waterbed. Also answered his phone from a unique spot. 

Sleeping on a waterbed was an adventure!

Joe & I drove to the S.F. airport – great. Had espresso coffee and tarts at a "sidewalk cafe" at the airport. Left at 1:05 P.M. on flight 128, $99.00. Cocktail & lunch en route to Chicago. Choice of Veal Parmesan, Chicken Princess (Teriyaki), Duck, Short ribs of beef. Arrived O'Hare 6:50 P.M.

Marie had turned 82 on March 23, and celebrated both in L.A. and up in Antioch. Sleeping on my waterbed shows Grandma had a sense of adventure. And making such a trip tells you something about her, she was not afraid at this age to embark on a two thousand mile journey by bus across the country! 

Going back by plane was a contrast she apparently enjoyed. Marie traveled out to California other times after this, but I think she took a plane for those trips. Her last visit was in 1988 when she was turning 90. She and my father flew out to San Jose for a week, and we had a birthday party for her, and for her great-granddaughter who shares a birthday. Marie was quite the traveler!

Marie Gerhard Kenyon, enroute to California, March 1988

Marie on her 90th birthday, with great-granddaughter Cristin on her 3rd

Travel theme in previous blogs

Should be a Movie covered the very long travels of my Swiss ancestors, from Bern Canton to Colorado via New Orleans. The blog Slow discussed my great Aunt Emma and the difficulties of automobile travel in the early 20th century with an unreliable car. In Prosperity I wrote about the first class steamship trip my great-great-grandmother Eliza Steiger took to emigrate to America. 

And many of our vacations have included some family history component. On our honeymoon to Ireland in 1983 my wife and I visited some of her Irish relatives, as I touched on in At the Cemetery. Our first trip to Europe as a family, in 2008, was family history themed and included stops in Scotland, Switzerland (Translation), and Sweden (Solitude and Birthdays). A trip in 2015 included investigating my Justen ancestry in the Eifel region of Germany (Begins with a Vowel), and my Becker ancestry in Poland (Tradesman). That same year we did some research in Massachusetts (So Many Descendants.) I'll cover a 2018 trip to France and Germany in War and Peace (upcoming), which included a second trip to Limburg, Germany (In the News). A 2019 trip from Detroit to New York (Out of Place), Vermont and Massachusetts was all about genealogy.

I even wrote about virtual travel using Google Street View in the blog I Can Identify!