At age 41 he built a covered wagon (The Last Wagon West) in which he took his family from Virginia to California taking 294 days. The horse-drawn wagon was the first and last wagon to ever go from coast to coast. He exposed his children to commerce, industry, and points of interest all along the way.
In 1962 he shipped the wagon to Europe by freighter and boarded the Queen Mary with his family. They traveled through France, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, West Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland and on to Moscow where their trip was highlighted in Life Magazine, which was an amazing feat in itself because it was during the Cold War.