Travel Lessons

A blog friend of mine, another Linda, always follows up her travels with a list of what she has learned. I admire that. Learning is an important part of travel for us.

Some of the learnings on this list are not new, but have been re-affirmed.  Others are discoveries about places new to me, places I have never been before.  We live in a vast and varied nation, full of beauty and history and welcoming people.

1. The People:  We met and exchanged conversation with so many interesting and helpful people.  Most places we went the staff of hotels and restaurants and Park Service wanted to know where we were from and what we were doing here.  They were interested in our quest for family history and often shared stories of their own.  So did Mike the Barber and the lady in the antique mall in Bainbridge, where we tracked down the Reeder family.  Mike might even be a distant relative, and both can tell you who still lives there from the list of names from 1860.

The people who staffed the genealogical societies and the county history centers were amazingly helpful, pulling references from shelves, showing us how to use them, racking their brains for what other source we might check, not giving up until every avenue of information had been thoroughly explored.  So too were the staff people in the court houses.  We especially go to know staff in Chillicothe, when we stood on the sidewalk together during the fire drill, made several trips to various offices after that, and then met several again working at the booth for Democrats at the fair.

There was that big, noisy extended family we sat near in the market square in Pittsburgh.  I guess there were about eight adults of varying ages and an infant.  They were heavy, crass and kept dropping the F bomb.  There was the stereotypical screaming panic when one woman discovered she had lost her cell phone.  She found it at Starbucks.  I confess I moved my chair so as to turn my back to them, because I  was staring at their fascinating awfulness.  And yet they were very loving to each other, and I'm sure if I had been friendly our conversation would have been interesting.

Oh, and I can't forget the conversation we had in the Best Western shuttle van as were were being picked up in the city of Pittsburgh for a ride back to the hotel.  The woman driver, the man from England and us - we talked futbol, as in soccer! Not football, as in the Stealers.  Loved it!

2. The land:  Pennsylvania and Ohio are so very green!  Vast hardwood forests in the Appalachians, productive, well tended farmland in the river valleys and hillsides.

Corn and soy beans everywhere, wherever there is cleared land to cultivate.  And all of this without irrigation.  It rains often enough during the summer to keep crops watered naturally.

That is probably why every home is surrounded by acres of green lawn.  This would be a good place to be a riding lawn mower dealer!  It's ironic that here in the PNW we go brown in the summer drought without expensive water bills, yet we have the reputation for being rainy. 

3. The cities:  When your city is old, you can let it crumble, or you can renew it.  We were very impressed with what Pittsburgh has done after the steel mill era, in cleaning up the riverfront and the downtown core to make it a very people friendly place.  The same was happening in Columbus, Ohio, and we enjoyed walking in the city the short time we were there.  But it is in the older neighborhoods where you really see the charm of a place.  One thing I learned - if you are going to a big city park where there is a conservatory  you are going to get to see the old mansions of the city.  They were beautiful and so well kept up.  I'm sure there are run down neighborhoods where we didn't go - there always are- but the old historic districts we were in were wonderful.

Old cities are built on waterways.  They have waterfronts.  That's where the history starts.

4. The food:  We do not travel to eat.  We eat so we can keep going and see more.  And so we usually eat utilitarian.  All of our lodgings supplied breakfast.  We frequently found a Subway shop for lunch, because they are EVERYWHERE! Our favorite dining experiences were in brew pubs.  They are usually in old buildings in historic parts of the city, have good food at a reasonable price, and are just fun.

5.The weather:  We had mild weather most of the time, and we able to do what we wanted outside without getting too wet or too hot.  But in the last few days, the humidity mixed with heat to make the air heavy and thick.  It was an effort to keep going.  Then thunderstorms kept us dodging downpours.  

I think we must have brought some of this weather home with us.  On the flight home, I saw the most incredible thunderhead, at least 40,000 feet high, lit up pink and orange by the setting sun, and streaking lightning.  My cameras were tucked away in the overhead bin, so you'll just have to share my mind image.  But wow!

And then the first night back home we had a terrific thunder and lightning storm here in Seattle. We got very little rain here, but some areas got more.   The humidity was up to 75% yesterday, high for us in the summer.  But this morning feels wonderful, sunny and cool and clear.  Ah.  Just the kind of morning you dream about all winter long.

6. The Quest for family History:  We set out to find records and see the places where Tom's paternal grandmother came from in Pennsylvania.  There we tracked Bowers and Slawsons and Vandervoorts. While we didn't find the ultimate proof of Susanna Tyson Bower's lineage, but we found traces of her and Daniel that take Tom's history back to three great grandparents.

Charles Reeder remains illusive.  It seems he walked out of the mist of the Appalachian woods one day, married once, then again, and produced children.  This dead end will probably remain so, because there just were no records in the wilderness that this land was in the early 1800's.  But Charles is a double great grandfather, and that's more history than many people can find.

The important thing is that we made the journey, found the traces, and walked in the footsteps of the ancestors.  that is powerful.

7.  The Photo Blog:  Many of you commented on my blogging while traveling.  I confess it was a lot of work, since my lap top is not as fast as my desk top and high speed internet here at home, but it became my evening entertainment as well as my journal.  And when I returned home, tired and ready for a change of pace, it was all done!  I have dumped all of my photos on my desktop now, and they are being stored on the cloud.  I will have to go back and re-edit them, but that can wait.

8. The Treasures: We came home with a few antiques and an few souvenirs, just enough to fit in our luggage.  They are not especially significant now that I have them home.  The real treasure is the experience:  seeing new places, meeting new people, experiencing history, both regional and personal.  And in all of this, appreciating once again the beauty of our country.  It is truly America the Beautiful.

Thank you to all of you who made it through my lengthy posts, and congratulations to anyone who made it through this one!