Otis was about 10 months old when Earl decided we should drive out to Colorado to visit his parents, sisters and brother and the sister-in-law we had never met. Paul and Elsie Dalton married Jan. 11, 1922. Our trip was planned for Aug. of 1922. Earl fixed a box to fit on the running board of our Ford touring car. We put ice in that box to keep milk for the children and a few things we had to eat on the way.
I remember we stopped at my parents in Douglass to leave some new aluminum ware I had recently bought (I still use the cookie tray and my son has the 8 qt. kettle). Mama had a half gallon jar of beet pickles and hard boiled eggs for us to take and have to eat on the way. As we were late starting we didn't get very far that first day. Earl had made a box to fit between the seats to hold our clothes. Covered with a heavy comforter the children had a nice place to sleep or play as we drove along.
The first night we camped at Cimarron in western Kansas. Next day we entered Colorado at Holly. Soon after we left Lamar we saw a big signboard telling of a short-cut to Denver. So we turned north to the little town of Wiley. Clouds had been threatening and soon after we left Wiley the downpour came. We stopped at a deserted house for shelter and to put curtains on car.
At that time the road from Wiley to Eads was only a trail and sometimes I thought we were lost but finally we got to Eads, then on north to Kit Carson. We camped that night at Wild Horse, a small town 13 miles west of Kit Carson. The next day on to Hugo, Limon, Denver, west to Colfax and north through Broomfield. At that time, it was hardly a wide place in the road. A Black Angus farm was the main thing at Broomfield. I remember the beautiful white fence around the farmstead. Lafayette and on into Boulder. Earl's parent's home on north 26th street. Boulder was just a small country town. The mountains looked so close and this flatlander thought it would just be a short walk over to the mountains.
Paul and Elsie lived out on Valmont road in a house on the Tenny King farm. Paul worked for Tenny many years. At Valmont we visited the Manchester family and a little farther north, the Hixson family and Andrus family. At one time Dad and Mother Teets had lived on Marus farm across the road from the Hixsons. The children had been together in Valmont school. The oldest Presbyterian Church in Colorado at Valmont, blacksmith shop run by Polzin, grocery store owned and run by Mr. Allen - Gladys Hawkin's father. On east from Valmont past the King house where Paul and Elsie lived, we visited Uncle Lewis and Aunt Effie Teets. Years before they had lived in Kansas, near the farm where my Grandfather John Parry and his wife Margaret Cause Hook Parry and family lived. My mother worked for Aunt Effie before their son Harry was born.
In 1940 I moved onto a 10 acre place east of Valmont which my husband's Uncle John White had bought from the Sawhill family. My mother came to live with me. Harry Teets came and got her and took her into Boulder before a Notary Public. He was able to get a birth certificate because she could swear of his birth. Colorado University had long wanted his birth certificate as he did stone work on many of the campus buildings.
After about two weeks of visiting a few times, Paul took off from work to take us to mountains. He knew better how to drive on mountain roads. Also his car did not overheat like ours did, some adjustments he had made for the high altitude driving. Roads were not like today's million dollar highways.
While we were here one of Earl's sisters left for a Nazarene school in California. We went south from Boulder to view "Garden of the Gods" near Colorado Springs. Also to Manitou Springs, down to Pueblo, and eastward through Rocky Ford and Las Animas. Do not remember where we camped at night, only that it was so hot we were anxious to get on home.