This and pictures following were taken while Dot vacationed with the Cullisons at Channel Lake, which is about 60 miles from Chicago. A later picture shows that they traveled by train to Antioch and then by horse and carriage (actually an original "station wagon") to the cabins at Channel Lake. It was one of the favored vacation places for Chicagoans and remained so until quite a while after World War II. With modern autos and good roads more and more people could take day trips to Fox River, Channel Lake, Starved Rock and the Dells. Now those places are polluted, desecrated and overrun with undesirables. A shame. Perhaps these places will be restored as part of environmental improvement programs.

Note Dot's caption "25 cents a ride." This was a stiff price, considering that a streetcar ride in Chicago was 3 cents, including a transfer with which you could continue your journey on other streetcar lines throughout the city. The only stipulation was that your next conveyance was going in the same general direction (for example, once you've gone north your next transfer must east or west, and once you've gone, say, west, you had to continue going north or west). A record of your trip was kept on the transfer (about the size and shape of a dollar bill), which was a small map of the Chicago streetcar lines. Each conductor would make a punch at your location when you got on and at all subsequent transfers. The 3-cent cost continued at least until 1948 (after World War I and World War II) when Bert graduated from high school.

In the automobile age, auto makers made vans with three rows of seats and wooden body panels to simulate these original station wagons, and called them, you guessed it, station wagons. By the 1950's they were a status symbol of the up-and-coming prosperous middle class. They were used to go to and from the railroad stations that spread out from Chicago and other cities into the suburbs, where three or four bedroom, two bathroom, homes were built with two-car garages.