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Published: September 13th 2011
By the summer of 1994 we had been living in Europe for 17 years. We had "been there and done that." Our kids were growing up without knowing what America was really like. To them it was just a fun vacation. So I declined my contract extension whereby the government would pay the transportation for my home leave in return for serving two more years. I paid for my family to return for home leave.
6 July 1994 Wednesday. The day after my final Infrastructure Committee meeting before the summer break, we flew to Washington, DC. We stayed in a hotel in Crystal City.
7 - 8 July 1994 Thursday and Friday. I had an appointment to see the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Installations and Environment about taking the job of my counterpart in his office who was about to retire. I did not receive any commitment and found out later that they decided to consolidate positions, so there wasn't anything open. I had other business to conduct while at the Pentagon, so Linda and the kids walked around Crystal City and made use of the hotel pool.
9 - 11 July 1994 Saturday through Monday. We
visited with our friends Steve and Kay and Darryl and Marilyn, attended our old church from the days we lived in Virginia from 1975 - 77, and toured the Smithsonian Museums and the National Zoo. We had lunch at the Outback Steakhouse with Steve and Kay. The waitress brought us our drinks. Will's had a small plastic sword in it. The next time the waitress walked by he stabbed her in the butt with it! Only four year old could get away with that.
12 - 19 July 1994 Tuesday through Tuesday. We drove to Mahaffey PA, where we visited my Dad's grave at Mt Zion Church on Punkin Ridge. We told our kids what a great Dad he was. Next we drove to Clarion where Linda went camping each summer. Following tradition we rented a canoe and soon we were far upriver. We had to turn around when it became too shallow and we got hung up. Also a thunderstorm was approaching so we paddled for our lives. We got to the car just as the heavens opened up. We arrived at Linda's Mom's home in time for supper.
While in New Castle for that week, we
visited Linda's aunts and uncles and cousins and the kids' great grandmother. One day we went with Buz and Kathy to a lake where we rented a pontoon boat for the day. Another day we went with Linda's brother Jon and sister Melody and her husband John and a step daughter, to a water/amusement park across the border in Ohio.
20 July 1994 Wednesday. We drove back to DC to return the rental car and stayed that night near the airport.
21 - 22 July 1994 Thursday and Friday. We flew to Denver and rented a car. We stayed in Denver two days visiting museums and checking out housing as we thought we might want to live in Colorado some day. Little did we know at the time, we would have to wait for eleven years when I retired.
23 July 1994 Saturday. We left early for Cheyenne, Wyoming, where we attended the Frontier Days Rodeo and Pow Wow. We saw bull riders and bucking broncos and stunt riders and everything else that entails the greatest rodeo experience that one can find. We also enjoyed watching the Indian dances with drums thumping. By late afternoon, a thunderstorm
was approaching. Sitting on metal bleachers wasn't the safest thing to do. We then drove to Laramie WY for the night.
24 - 29 July 1994 Sunday through Friday. We drove from Laramie to Grand Teton National Park. On the way we stopped at Split Rock where the Oregon Trail came through. This was also a stop on the Pony Express route. We walked to the tracks. We then continiued to Flagg Ranch, located between Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks, where we had a cabin for five nights. This would be our base camp for visiting Jackson Hole, and Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks.
Monday we were up early to take a float trip on the Snake River. Will was scared to death. We practically had to drag him kicking and screaming into the raft. We tried to explain to him the difference between white water rafting and a float trip, and that we were on the safer of the two. It was only after we got underway that he calmed down and started to enjoy himself.
Another day we rented a boat at Signal Mountain Lodge and putted around Lake Jackson, each having their
turn to steer the motorboat.
On the other days we drove to and hiked around Jackson, where we did some souvenier shopping for T-shirts mostly; around the various lakes below the Grand Tetons, and to all the thermal hot spots, geyser fields where we watched Old Faithful erupt nearly on time, rivers and falls in Yellowstone. We also road in a stagecoach at Yellowstone.
Having to drive from Flagg Ranch which is located between the two parks made for some long driving days, and was inconvenient, but we were not able to get reservations at the parks at the time.
30 July 1994 Saturday. We drove through Yellowstone and exited at the east gate in the direction of Cody WY. We turned south after Cody and stayed the night in Worland WY.
31 July 1994 Sunday. We drove east over the Bighorn Mountains. We noticed that every so often along the side of the road there was a sign stating how old the rocks were. As he drove higher the rocks grew older. This didn't make sense to us. How could the old rocks be on top and the younger ones below without doing a flip.
That must have been some geological flip!
We got on I-90 at Buffalo and drove east to the exit where we turned north for a few miles to see Devils Tower National Monument, featured at the end of the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." We decided not to climb the tower since the Indians hold it to be sacred...actually Will tried and probably got farther than any of us could given our poor shape and lack of technical climbing skills. We arrived in Spearfish SD in time for dinner, and spent the night there.
1 - 3 August 1994 Monday through Wednesday. We drove through the Black Hills, stopping first in the gold mining town of Lead, where Wild Bill Hickok, the sherriff, was shot and buried. We toured a gold mine. The guide was demonstrating mining techiques and lost track of where Will was standing and delivered a glancing blow with his sledge hammer. Will turned out to be OK by some miracle, although his sisters maintain that he has never been OK. We stopped to see Mount Rushmore with its carvings of the four Presidents, Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Roosevelt, and featured at the
end of the Hitchcock movie classic staring Rock Hudson and Eva Marie Saint "North by Northwest."
We stayed in Rapid CIty for several nights and explored the local area, to include Badlands National Park and the nearby Wall Drug, Custer State Park, and Wind Cave National Park. We all liked this area, and Linda wanted to retire here. I reminder her of the sub-zero winter temperatures all winter.
4 August 1994 Thursday. We drove to Fort Laramie WY and toured the fort which guarded the Oregon Trail. We saw the trail tracks nearby. Then we drove to Denver for the night. We used the pool at our ariport motel. I recall talking to a couple from Boston. They were amazed that the cost per ticket for my family to travel from Brussels to Washington DC to Denver, to Miami, and back to Brussels was only $600...that's what they spent for a round trip ticket from Boston to Denver.
5 - 11 August 1994 Friday through Friday. We returned our rental car and caught the early morning flight to Miami, where we rented another car for the week we would spend with my Mom and sister Sue and
Setting "sail" on the pontoon boat
Buz, Linda, Tamara, Rosanna, and Kathyfamily in Lake Worth and Palm beach Gardens. During our week there we mostly used Sue's pool and the beaches.
Each evening we went to the beach near the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach with my Mom to watch the day turn to night. It was so peaceful. This is a tradition we kept every time we visited FLorida.
One day we went to Jonathan Dickenson State Park, and rented a canoe to explore the many waterways looking for crocodiles and other swamp flora and fauna. Rosanna and Will were too afraid after the Clarion canoe trip: especially since turning over meant being eaten by a crocodile.
12 - 13 August Friday and Saturday. We caught the overnight flight from West Palm Beach, via Raleigh/Durham, to Brussels.
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