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PHOTO CONTEST Did you unearth some great service snapshots over the holidays? Take a trip down memory lane, and prepare your best photos for MOAA’s 2015 patriotic photo contest. First-place winners in each category receive

$500; second- and third-place winners also receive cash prizes. Each entrant may submit only one photo in each of four categories. Find full rules at www .moaa.org/photocontest.

EDUCATIONAL ASSISTANCE Don’t miss the deadline to apply for grants and interest-free loans from the MOAA Scholarship Fund. Eligibility extends to children from military families who are pursu- ing their first undergrad- uate degree. A parent’s membership in MOAA (if officer) or Voices for America’s Troops (if en- listed) is required for stu- dents who are selected. Apply at www.moaa.org/ education by noon East- ern time March 2.

Visit a Novel on the Wagon Trail

T

he 1958 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction went to The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert

Lewis Taylor (Doubleday, 1958), re- lating an 1849 cross-country wagon train journey from Independence, Mo., to the California gold fields. The novel alternates between the pompous and self-aggrandizing letters of Dr. Sardius McPheeters and the Mark Twain-ish, day-to-day recount- ings of his young son, Jaimie. The wagoners

encounter “injuns” and traveling preachers, wicked villains, vast buffalo herds, endless days of dust and mud, wind-whipped prairies, thirsty deserts, and formidable mountains. The author draws extensively on historical diaries, journals, guides, and memoirs.

Even more than 150 years later, the

ruts of wagon trails are still visible in places. Independence’s National Fron- tier Trails Museum (www.ci.indep endence.mo.us/nftm) helps tell the story. Spotting Chimney Rock (above) was always a moment of celebration for pioneers. Today, the National Historic Site at Bayard, Neb., (www.nebraskahis tory.org/sites/rock) preserves that excite- ment. Fort Laramie, an important stop- ping spot in Wyo- ming territory (www .nps.gov/fola), has a

museum and visitor center. At the Cali- fornia Trail Center (www.californiatrail center.org) in Elko, Nev., a scale model depicts the many pioneer trails. — Col. Glenn Pribus, USAF (Ret), and Marilyn Pribus

26 MILITARY OFFICER JANUARY 2015

IMAGES: INSET, CHIMNEY ROCK, OGALILLALH (SIOUX VILLAGE IN THE FOREGROUND) BY ALBERT BIERSTADT; TOP, CATHY CLINE; LEFT, SHUTTERSTOCK