In the summer of 1985, 16 members of the Edlén family piled into a Winnebago RV and a Chevy van and had the vacation of a lifetime. Our destination was Carlsbad, California for a visit to our grandmother Mary Catharine Nelson—better known as Gram or Great-gram to the family. We traveled from Rockford, Illinois across the Western United States, to California and back. Along the way we saw great rivers, a green giant, a stone tower, steaming geysers, friendly buffalo, zoos, ships, canyons and much more! We recorded many of the events of our journey on a brand new (at that time) VHS camcorder—it was state of the art technology in 1985! Copies of that grainy old VHS tape have made the rounds of some of the family members over the years. I have a copy that I had not viewed for many years. I dusted it off and, with a little help from some newer technology I copied it here to our little web site for the whole family to enjoy. The video is still as grainy as ever, but I think the content is priceless.
