Along with schooling challenges was the question of whether the family could sustain their Rock Creek farm for much longer, and they began to think about where they might venture to solve both of these dilemmas. Though she was only four at the time, Lela remembered walking barefoot when she was playing outdoors in the yard and feeling the velvety dust between her toes that the dust storms in the south central states were blowing north: “When we were out and about, there was nothing but dirt.”

That fall, 1930, the crop failed again, so Percy and Pluma, Edna Fern, Bob, and Lela piled into their second-hand Dort Motor Car that Percy called “Tin Lizzy.” Edna Fern had turned sixteen that summer, Bob had just turned twelve, and Lela was going on five. They took along only their few clothes and some cooking supplies and headed to Glasgow, Montana, and then west to Springfield, Oregon, where Percy’s older brother Byron had settled and started up an automobile garage. Percy and Pluma would try to find jobs, and in any case the winter climate on the West Coast would be a welcome change. They could also look forward to visiting relatives in Washington and Oregon.

Ruth was in nurse’s training in Glasgow by this time, so she didn’t make the trip with the family, and it was decided that Lyman would stay behind on his own to look after what livestock they still had. Lyman was just fourteen, but the Andersons were a mile south so help wasn’t far away; also, Grandpa Alexander, Grandma Elizabeth, and Uncle Burton were still living on their Lonesome Butte homestead.

Edna Fern wrote, “On the way through the Rockies, we stopped near a mountain one evening and Bob and I did a little hiking on it. We’d had a lot of experience sledding down hills in the winter, and climbing them to see the far horizon in the summer, but it was exhilarating to climb on a real mountain.”

At the time, the family saw this move as a temporary retreat, still hoping to make a go of their farming venture in southern Saskatchewan.