You made me smile, Debbie.
In February 1981, I had a brain tumor removed. I was in sales and not doing
real well meeting my planned goals. About mid-June I said to my wife that
I wasn't going to break any records so let's take some time off. We rented
a motorhome and took off from California heading for New York. We spent the
next thirty-five days taking the "Family Circle" route looking for
cemeteries. We stopped often taking pictures of each other standing next to
our ancestors headstones. On the days it rained, we wore those 30-gallon
lawn and leaf bags rather than miss a chance we may never get again. We
also stopped to see many relatives, both known and unknown, along the way.
Quite a few thought we were nuts but they still enjoyed meeting and visiting
with us. We stopped at a Catholic church in Utica, New York hoping to get a
baptismal record of my wife's grandmother. It did pan out but the parish
priest insisted that we call relatives who still lived there. We had an
impromptu Colonel Sanders dinner one afternoon with some of Judith's Italian
cousins. What a day! Nearly all of the adults have passed on but we keep
in touch with their children on Facebook. We have relived that trip a
million times since. I would do it again but I am not sure I could safely
drive 9,000 miles in a motorhome.
Crazy or not, we have never regretted that experience. Doing what you love
is what life is all about! We love genealogy and finding the unexpected.
Ray