My Grandmother's 1926 Road Trip--From Colorado to Maine and Back Through Canada: "Threw Off Fear and Dared the Adventure"

By Hannah Kent Schoff, Anne Louise Shields, Louise Schoff Ehrman

In the summer of 1926 my forty six year old grandmother, Louise Schoff Ehrman, drove seven thousand miles in a Model T Ford Touring car from her home in Colorado Springs to Southwest Harbor Maine--and back through southeastern Canada. Her sixteen year old daughter Betty was her only companion--at least for the first half of the trip. (A few days earlier Louise's husband, G. Edgar Ehrman and nine year old son, Bobby, had boarded a train to Virginia to visit grandparents. Louise and Betty were to meet them there; pick up Bobby and resume their journey to the Jersey shore, Philadelphia, and Southwest Harbor Maine.) A woman alone attempting such a trip in 1926 certainly was not without precedent. Twenty-two year old Alice Ramsey drove across the continent in 1909. Effie Gladding and her husband motored across the continent in 1914; Emily Post in 1915; and Beatrice Larned Massey in 1919. Ramsey, Post, and Massey began their journey from New York, while Effie Gladding and her husband drove from San Francisco to New York. All four women wrote about their cross continent adventures--but only Alice Ramsey, the first woman to motor across the continent, actually drove the whole way--under treacherous road conditions. (Emily Post was chauffeured by her son, while Gladding and Massey shared the driving with their husbands.) Inspired especially by the courage of Alice Ramsey, my grandmother, not a particularly courageous woman--at least in her younger years--bought a tent, packed the Ford, closed up the family bungalow in Colorado Springs, "threw off fear and dared the adventure." I've always thought my grandmother's 1926 camping trip was a courageous endeavor. But I think my grandmother would be the first to acknowledge that the challenges of her road trip in 1926 paled in comparison to those brave women who preceded her. She admired especially the courage and determination of Alice Ramsey and Emily Post. (When they motored across the country automobiles were not reliable and roads were mostly unpaved; and invariably the roads became impassable quagmires in rainy weather.) My grandmother grew up in Philadelphia; graduated from Bryn Mawr in 1902 with degrees in mathematics and physics. Louise met her husband to be, G. Edgar Ehrman, a civil engineer, while vacationing in Yellowstone Park; they fell in love and married in 1908. Edgar,an engineer, worked at reclamation projects in Wyoming, Oregon, and Washington. His work provided them a unique opportunity to explore the American west: They hiked mountain trails; camped under the stars, fished in mountain streams under cloudless western skies, and rode horseback everywhere. Those early adventures created lovely, lingering memories of the West.Louise wrote about her 1926 road trip, from Colorado to Maine and back. Intended for publication she sent a copy of her work--"Are You Alone?"--to her mother, Hannah Kent Schoff who, after Louise's untimely death, privately published it in "Adventures in the Great Outdoors." Louise's road trip would prove to be the most challenging--and most fulfilling--adventure of her life: Reflecting on her cross country journey she wrote, "It was good to have satisfied our wanderlust, to have achieved our goal and returned, to have summoned courage to meet the unknown and to have found the world friendly. Our experience might prove an encouragement to others to venture, too to know that two small women, part of the time with a very small boy, had driven seven thousand miles, and had been refreshed by four weeks of sleeping in the open . . ."Every adventure with a thrill in it remains a glorious memory. That is a part of the charm."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1549704192
• ISBN13: 9781549704192
• Release Date: October 2017
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 126 Pages
• Weight: 0.86 lbs.
• Dimensions: 11.0" x 0.3" x 8.5"