The temperature outdoors was 49 degrees when I got up today. The furnace came on several times during the night. The date? July 18, 2025. Yes.

I should explain that I was waking up on this particular day at 9800 ft elevation in beautiful Colorado.

And sadly, on that blissful cool morning we would pack everything up in our RV and head eastward toward Kansas. Man, it’s always painful to leave the mountains and go back home every summer when we vacation in Colorado.

Why? Surely you don’t need to ask. The temperature on that very same 49 degree day in Colorado was in the mid 90’s in Kansas with typical Kansas humidity and heat index near 100. But home is good. Once we get there and go inside the cool house.

As we drove along the seemingly endless stretch of I-70 from eastern Colorado into western Kansas I found myself fighting the urge to whine. I know, I know…whining is my forte. There was nothing to visually distract me from feeling sorry for myself there on ye ol’ interstate. So hard to leave the mountains.

As the very very cool air circulated through the cab of our pickup I started reminiscing. You may not have ever experienced a hot summer Midwest road trip with no air conditioning. I have. Long road trips to visit my sisters who lived in Nebraska and Oklahoma. Sitting in the back seat of the family 1963 Chevy BelAir sedan. Practicing my whine.

People, we didn’t even have cold bottles of water to drink for hydration as we traveled along. Buying bottled water was something that wasn’t available and could not even be fathomed back in the 60’s and 70’s. Selling drinking water? Are you crazy? Soda pop. Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Orange Crush. That was the deal. We cruised down the highway with the windows rolled down, sipping lukewarm pop.

From the backseat I could see the speedometer. We were going nowhere at a relatively slow rate of speed in my opinion. If I happened to be in the front seat sitting between Mom and Dad, I would attempt to move my left foot over a bit and help Dad accelerate a bit. Yeah, that was never a good experience. Brief and meaningless. “Get your foot off the accelerator, Bunny!” Dad was not easy to fool. And sadly, he wasn’t much into driving over the speed limit, either.

Sitting in the back seat, staring out the open window, hot wind styling my hair. The only visual distraction might be something like this:

Clouds in the sky. I remember looking at the clouds and waiting, hoping, that soon they would provide just a wee bit of shade on our car.

Ahhhhh, see the shade? But up ahead you can see the bright sun on the highway, ready to again provide scorching heat to our arms that were resting on the open window. I recall wishing that the clouds could just stay over us for the rest of the trip. And wishing we could speed up just a bit to the next dark cloud shaded area of pavement. Not to happen. Refer to above accelerator story.

Do any of you recall any similar type experiences? How did you cope? Young people, air conditioning was a luxury back in the day. My husband and I owned two, maybe three different cars before we finally bought one with functioning AC. Shortly after our first baby was born we purchased a used 1974 Ford Maverick, the color of fresh mustard, two door, brown upholstery. Nothing about this car appealed to us except it had air conditioning!!! Yessiree, it had AC vents and controls. Sadly, the AC didn’t work. Needed a new condenser. ***sigh*** we couldn’t afford that repair.

All of this reminiscing kind of suppressed my whine as we traveled back to Kansas. And now I’m sitting in my cool home writing this blog post. And praising the Lord that He gave someone the brilliance to invent the magnificent wonder of air conditioning.