History of Hazel Vanessa Gibson

I've just completed a draft of the life of my mother, Hazel Vanessa Gibson. The draft will be available in the near future to those who have an interest in downloading it onto their computer. Here is an excerpt from her history, titled "I walked the Blues"
"In 1922 my father decided to take a long trip to Oregon and California as he had always wanted to see this country and he decided that he should go before he got any older. He was at this time 60 years old. Our friends, Mr. and Mrs. Furnace wanted to do the same thing, so we planned the trip together. My father resigned his position with the government and we sold or stored all of our furniture and many of our belongings as all we could take with us was what we could take in our car. The travel speed for our car was about 15 to 20 miles per hour so it would take us days to travel an appreciable distance. I remember well crossing the Snake River at Glenns Ferry. We traveled about 50 to 75 miles each day, stopping each nigh along a river or some campground provided by the state for over night travelers. Our route was through Boise, Caldwell, Payette, Idaho and then Baker, Oregon. It was on my sister’s birthday (Bertha) that we stayed all night at Baker, 23 June 1922. We continued on to Walla Walla , Washington where we stayed for about a month. We picked boysen berries on a large berry ranch. We then headed back to LaGrande, Oregon as we planned to go on to the Willamette Valley near Portland where we were told there was lots of work for berry pickers. We stayed in LaGrande all night so as to cross the Blue Mountains in daylight as it was an all day trip over bad roads.
Lots of travelers were in the campground that night. They gathered around the campfire debating whether it would be safe to start out the next morning in as much as it had been raining and the roads were thought to be muddy and dangerous. Pendleton was about 50 miles from LaGrande so it would be an all day trip. It was with great excitement and apprehension that we started out the next morning. As debated the previous night we found steep narrow winding roads in very poor condition. We would often get stuck in the mud and we had to place large rocks under the wheels of the car to keep it from rolling back down a steep hill or off the side of the road. Ethel, Martha, Bertha and I walked almost all the way across the Blue Mountains. Mother and George were unable to walk so they stayed in the car with my father. It took us the entire day to make the trip as we arrived in Pendleton late that evening. We stayed in Pendleton that night and found that the city was getting ready the big Pendleton Roundup that is held each year."
And so indeed, she walked over the Blue Mountains from LaGrande to Pendleton.
The entire text and graphics may be read at: http://www.wsdstaff.net/~dbrooks/RHBrooksFiles/HVGHist.doc
RHB