TURAS GIRLS

When I was 9, my parents packed up what we needed to survive into a big, brown conversion van we fondly named Bruno, and the 4 of us went on a journey that has forever changed me.

From colorful Colorado, through the beauty of Yellowstone, the Great Salt Flats of Utah, along the Columbia River gorge of Oregon, to the windy coast of Washington, into the majesty of Banff, and the wilds of Montana, then all the way over to Wisconsin.

We camped in that van. We laughed in that van. We grew a tight bond as a family in that van. Sure, there were stressful times, frustrating moments, challenges unseen to us as kids at the time, but I will always look back fondly at the time we lived in that van.

Bruno came to an unfortunate demise a year later after a car accident in Kearney, NE. As we sat healing in a hospital, Bruno went up in flames at the garage he was being fixed in. I don’t recall what vehicle we had after that, but Bruno had served us well and was the last car I remember naming.