The Fletchers took a trip to visit their daughter Blanche Scott and her family in Idaho.   Starting from Ganges Michigan, through Illinois and Iowa, the rolling hills of Nebraska and through the southern Wyoming plains, and up winding roads crossing mountain passes in the Grand Teton Mountians.

Traveling across country on dirt roads was not easy.   Just from Ganges, Michigan to the west side of Chicago, Illinois, took 3 days.   (Now days it takes only about an hour).   They stopped every evening to camp for the night and rest their tired bodies.   In one area they had to camp and wait for two days because of flooding.

They had only minor difficulties like cleaning carbon out of the engine and such things as shoveling mud.   Other problems were gasoline and food.   They had to make sure they carried enough extra to get through the long stretches of open country.

Transporting all their gear was quite an acomplishment.   From the photos you can see that they carried their camp kitchen on the side of the car.

As you can see, most of the road was nothing more than ruts in the ground. No paved hiways or maps as we have them today.   Getting from one community to the next was pure guesswork and probably a little luck.   Orlo told me that they followed the telephone and power lines a lot.

The photographs in this article were part of the group of photographs that my father had for many years.   There were others that may have been part of this group, but we were not sure.

In 1987, Sue and I visited Orlo in Michigan and video taped a three hour interview with him. (One hour was lost as we had run out of tape and didn't know it.)   It was a wonderful experience to listen to his stories of the trip and other parts of his life.   Orlo's father, George Fletcher was a brother to my great grandmother "Louise Fletcher Wright" wife of Henry Myron Wright.

In the photos you will notice that they were able to find and camp in wooded areas during the first few days in Illinois and Iowa.   Later however, as they moved into Nebraska the area was quite open and desolate.   The roads were fairly well used in Illinois (although unpaved), but when they were in the western reaches of Iowa and Nebraska things changed.   In the middle of Nebraska they were nothing more than two ruts, and in some cases they were not sure if they were on the right trail.   The photo with Orlo holding the rabbit was the last of the good roads until they reached Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

The road followed the telephone or telegraph lines most of the time.   In one photo you can see where the telephone lines climb into the mountains in the background and the road (trail) moves off to the right to an area that is not so steep.   Also note in the center of the picture is the tent with the car parked behind it a number of yards off the trail.

In the lower reaches of the valleys they encountered many swampy areas that were almost impassable, and many creeks that they would have to ford.

According to Orlo, some of the most beautiful parts of the trip were in the area where they had to climb through the mountains between Jackson Hole and Idaho.

The entire trip took about three weeks to complete.   One wonders how many spare tires and spare parts they had to carry with them, or if they had to carry a large amount of extra fuel.   As you can see the old car was well loaded down with camping gear, and with very little space left for Orlo in the back seat.