Janet: And so the kids were afforded a lot of freedoms that was just unbelievable. And me being who I am, my husband bought me a little travel trailer and taught me how to pull it. And so the kids— because he shift worked at a mine— and so I'd load up the trailer and tell the kids they could each invite one friend, and always end up with four or five extra friends just thrown in the car. We go up to Big Timber water slide, and if it was raining, there was plan B. We'd go up to the university and go through the museum and do all that stuff. And it was fun. And everybody loved doing it. We had a blast. Parents loved taking the kids. Of course, I would have loved it too, but we had fun. We were always doing something different. You know, not being a cow girl.

I relied on what I knew, which I like to go to old towns, Ghost Towns. History is really important to me and all that. So somebody gave me a map of Wyoming with all of Buffalo Bill's campsites, just a little X on them, Buffalo Bill campsite, and there were all these different places where they had done and of course, we've been to Cody and the Irma [Hotel] and the Buffalo Bill Museum. So we decided that we were going to go visit them all. So the kids, my kids, and whoever kid went with us, we'd drive over and had a big old LTD station wagon, and we would go out [to the Buffalo Bill campsites] and there'd be nothing there, but we'd just sit there and dream or think about, maybe, what went on there and how it would have been back then.

It was really fun, really fun.The kids liked it because they—I don't know if they learned too much—just it was different, you know. I'd build kites with the kids, and we'd go up and we'd fly them. And you just did a lot more natural things with your children than you do down in California. 

Note: The transcript above has been condensed from its original audio recording to improve the flow and readability of the story.