I am enjoying exploring my home-to-be. In 1958 I applied to the University of Washington in Seattle to do graduate studies in geography. I did not receive a favorable reply. In fact I did not receive any reply at all. The 2 other universities I applied to both offered me teaching fellowships but as I recall, the terms for the post at Northwestern were more attractive – so Evanston Illinois is where I spent the academic year, 1959-60, including a summer school in Platteville Wisconsin to learn fieldwork.
The following September I travelled to Evanston to attend the wedding of one of my Middlebury College roommates. I met up with some of my Northwestern friends and the upshot of that was that I joined these friends, Helene and Bob and (mad) Mohammed Mohammed, for a road trip to the West Coast – all the way on Route 66, as it then was. 
Upon arrival in Palm Springs near Los Angeles, Mohammed delivered the car to its owner, and Helene and Bob and I flew north to San Francisco to visit friends and go camping in the Sierra Nevada. Still footloose, I decided to take the bus North to visit another college roommate who was teaching in Seattle – my first arrival in Seattle, September 1959.
I thought Seattle was a wonderful place then – (and I still do now.)
Photo credit – 1994 view, heading west out of Chicago
