Week 10 of Abundant Genealogy

Week 10 – Genealogy Road Trips: No two genealogy road trips are the same but they’re always fun and meaningful. Describe a memorable trip in your past. Where did you go? What did you find (or not find)? Did you meet any new cousins? What did the trip mean to you and your family?

me in first grade

I have yet to take a genealogy road trip, and I am trying to think of a time that my family has gone to visit “long lost relatives” sometime in the past.  Unfortunately not many are coming to mind.  All the trips we took to visit family were to other known members of the family.  The closest we may have come was a trip to El Paso, Texas when I was 6.

Every winter my mother’s mom would become a snow bird.  She would leave the cold Indiana weather behind and winter with her sons, Jim and Jack, who both lived with their families in El Paso.  Over winter break my first grade year, my mother, my father, and I accompanied her on this trip.  We drove for two days and stayed a week.  As far as I can remember this was the first time I met Jack and his wife Helga.  It was a trip that will not be forgotten in mine or parents memories for all the things that went wrong, rather than for anything in particular.

I can see bits and pieces in my mind; it actually is a pretty foggy week.  Jack and his wife Helga didn’t have any children; they had German Sheppards.   I can remember playing fetch with them in the back yard before dinner one night.  We stayed with Uncle Jim, his wife Sheryl and her two children.  Popeye, with Robin Williams, came out that winter and we all went to see it one evening.  That was also the first time I had seen mountains and we went hiking up the pass overlooking town.  I learned that cactus hurt too.