Sorting More Than Laundry : Weekly Slide Photos

This week I'm posting slides of a trip that I took when I was seven years old. My mother, my grandmother, my step grandmother, and my cousin, Jessica, all packed up Connie's station wagon and drove out west, stopping at all of the National Parks as we made our way out to visit my Auntie Marilyn in the woods of California.

Here are five things I remember about the trip:

Jessica and I rode in the backseat and played Barbies 24/7 with Connie yelling, "Put down those Barbies and look out the window!"
I was terrified of riding a mule down the Grand Canyon, and I worried on the drive there. When we pulled into the parking lot I choked on a piece of ice and thought my life was ending right there before it ended on a mule. My grandfather popped me on the back and saved me from death and then my mother found out you had to be a certain age to ride down on a mule, and I wasn't that age yet. Suddenly the Grand Canyon was a great trip!
The window in the back of the station wagon wouldn't go up right before we went into Yellowstone Park, and we all worried about it in case a bear would come up to our car as we had heard happened. Jessica and I had some papers stuck up above the window in a slot and I had wondered aloud if that had anything to do with the stuck window. Everyone said no, but when I finally removed the papers the window began working...just before we entered Yellowstone. I've always considered myself a fixer after that.
As we walked down the Grand Canyon my grandfather slipped and almost fell over the side.
Old Faithful and the other geysers stunk like rotten eggs, and I was terrified of falling off the sidewalk and burning alive.

I'm surprised that we have slides of our trip as my father was not on this trip. My father did all, or most of, the photographs that I own. He recorded my life so to speak, but on this trip Connie took a few photos. She didn't do such a bad job.