Posted on 09/22/2025 9:21:54 AM PDT by vespa300
ROAD TRIP TO CALIFORNIA, featuring the Charles W. Vaughan family of Cleveland, Ohio. Thanks to Llyswen Vaughan Franks for allowing me to post her family's film on my channel!
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
Thanks for posting this. I’m glad they fixed the DeSoto.
Great stuff! Thanks for posting. It really brings back memories for me.
I grew up in upstate NY. Mom was from Potlatch, Idaho (Dad married mom in 1947 at the University of Idaho and took mom back to his home in Westchester County, NY). Starting in the late 50s or maybe 1960, every two years Dad would buy a new car and we’d set off on a long road trip around the country.
We visited Mom’s aunt in Valparaiso, IN; my cousin going to college in Chicago; Mom’s folks in Idaho; my uncle (Dad’s brother) in Twin Falls, ID (my uncle settled in Idaho after the war and never went back to NY). Then to Albuquerque to see another of my mom’s aunts and on to Fort Worth to see mom’s brother and family (another uncle). I think we were on the road three weeks and traveled 6,000 to 7,000 miles! Plus, no air conditioning going through the western deserts! Dad always made it a point for us to see all the western sites even though we never stopped anywhere for long — we were on a mission to see all the relatives.
It never occurred to me that nobody else did what Mom & Dad did. None of our relatives traveled to visit us in NYS. It’s amazing that Mom & Dad did those trips faithfully every two years so mom could see her folks and us kids could get to now them and the other relatives. I still have scrapbooks from two or three of those trips!
The video you posted shows a coal-fired train around 1 minute. The smoke from that locomotive is amazing. Diesel engines sure cleaned up that mess.
Did you notice the black stripe down the center to the highway lanes? Oil seals in engines were pretty bad in those days and every car leaked oil from the engine. Today, you’ll only see an oil stain at bumps or dips that shake the few drops of oil off.
Cool, enjoyed the national park photos. Having been to a few out in Utah it’s nice that people are still enjoying these parks.
We made some progress in the suitcase area, no more luggage them around, just put wheels on them:)
Wow.....what memories you have. Thank you. And the car made all those thousands of miles! One summer, my Dad took me and my 4 brothers from Los Angeles to Mexico south of Douglas Arizona......in a green volkswagon Bug. 5 people. Dad and 4 boys.
It was so hot after awhile...we said forget the coke and rootbeer.......give us water.
How an air cooled VW bug made it all those miles, I’ll never know.
Sounds like we share the same kind of memories. Precious Memories of a time gone by.....thanks for sharing!
So that was a Desoto? I thought it was a ship. Big car!
I’m addicted to these kinds of videos.
Yeah, that was some trip. National parks, Southern and Northern California.....that family never forgot that. Looked like a good family too.
Me too. I think it’s because I’m getting old and yeah...it was better back then. I know every generation says that...but perhaps we are the first where it’s actually true.
The Bryce Canyon Lodge pictured is still there, like many of the old park lodges. If the walls could talk.
Cool.....and the family is all gone. So spiritual. thanks.
Loved the part about Laguna Beach!
The kids looked so healthy!!!!!
It’s more than a road trip “to” California.
From the Midwest it heads somewhat northwest up through Wyoming into Utah, and then South through canyon country (Utah, Nevada, Arizona - Bryce, Zion and Grand Canyons), enters southern California with its Oranges and Pacific Coast beaches, up the coast to San Francisco, through the redwood forests, and east up and over through Montana (Yellowstone) and the Dakotas (Mt Rushmore), in its round trip back to Nebraska.
every thing I saw had clean roadways with no litter. Also the beaches were clean and the people were not wealthy, nor were they fat. Nice looking folks.
We traveled a lot in the 1950s, moving several times due to my father’s career in the Air Force (originally Army Air Corps). We ate “picnic” lunches along the way more often then eating at restaurants, and even when we did stop at roadside eating places I do not remember litter; nor was litter seen all the time along the highways. We collected our own litter in our car as I think most people did; emptying it at our next meal or night time stop.
Our residential route went from Illinois, to Ohio, to Texas, to New York, and back through the Midwest (stopping at the grandparents) to California - from 1952 to 1956 (five states in four years).
We had a couple “Brownie” cameras; wish we had borrowed my uncle’s movie camera.
Yes, it’s one heck of a trip. They covered so many miles....they looked so happy and smiles. Cherished memories.
Yes...lean and tone and healthy. I have been to every spot on that video in Laguna Beach. It hasn’t changed much...well, except for the homeless and criminals.
What an interesting video. I wasn’t born until December of 1970, but those times really seemed like the good old days. Much better than today.
I was really surprised from 11:07 through 12:22. I believe that bathhouse and lake was the locale heavily featured in the 1962 horror film “Carnival Of Souls”. It looked just like it, except in the film the place was abandoned. As a big fan of that film, I was pleasantly surprised to see the place while it was still in use.
Thanks for the upload!
recently someone said that the highways were messes in the forties fifties sixties and seventies.
I remember messes by roads in poor sections, the same sort of places that there is graffiti and messes now.
but in the country and where otherwise. No
We had a ‘46 De Soto just like that. It had a luxurious interior and even a spotlight. Unfortunately, its axle broke as we were driving through Claremont, Calif. in the spring of 1954, and we soon traded it for a ‘54 Ford.
I think it is true that other than more lazy and less considerate people, as the county got “richer” it also developed a consumerism with more “disposable” items and more consumables packaged to be disposable.
When most “soda pop” was bottled and not in a plastic cup or tin can people did not throw the bottles away; you could turn them in for a “deposit”.
Add to that the absolute explosion of the infinite variety of snack food and the huge mass marketing of it, and with the cultural proliferation of more lazy people you get the litter perfect storm - greater opportunity meets greater laziness.
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