Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Days 8 and 9 of the Seaver Midwest Genealogy Tour

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Day 8 of the vacation tour took us from Fort Wayne, Indiana (a Genea-Mecca, if you know what I mean) to St. Joseph, Michigan to see genea-blogger Jasia (Creative Gene and several others) and her husband, Mr. Jasia.  We got there at about 11:30 a.m., sat and talked for an hour (big surprise, that, isn't it?), went to Jimmy John's for lunch (again...Linda can eat it), then MrJ and I took a walk about town while the ladies went shopping, visited the Nina and Pinta replicas at the harbor (interesting docent talks, small ships, absolutely mind boggling how they could sail those ships to the end of the earth), back to the house for more talking, and then to dinner at Clementine's and an ice cream afterwards.  Whew.  Their Internet service was down, so I was blogless yesterday (well, except for the one post I had pre-written). 

Jasia is everything I imagined and more - beautiful, funny, smart, opinionated, happy.  We've been blogging for five years or so, and we've shared our lives and interests online, so I knew her family background and interests.  They share time between their Detroit home and their condo in St. Joseph, which provides relaxation, photography and fun times.  I even know her "real" name, but I'm not telling!  What did we talk about?  The usual - our lives, our genealogy research, and genea-bloggers we know or know about.  You should see their dog, what a majestic and graceful animal.  He was very eager to get to know us and very well behaved.

Day 9 started with a sumptuous breakfast prepared by MrJ, and then we left at about 10:15 a.m. for our drive through four states to our hotel in Jefferson, Wisconsin.  It took five hours... due to the traffic in Chicago, the road repairs in every state, and two stops at the Oasis (food, restrooms, etc.) along the highway.  After getting into the room, I took Linda to the Wal-Mart across the street and took off for the Watertown WI library.  I found it, but it didn';t have much of interest to me.  The Dodge-Jefferson Counties Genealogical Society building in Watertown was not open (my mistake, I didn't double check the open times recently).  So I went back to the hotel in Jefferson early and Linda came back from shopping.  We went to dinner at Frank's Family Restaurant (excellent, cheap meal) and then for an ice cream (hey, I'm on vacation). 

Tonight I finally had a chance to check my email (about 100 messages) and Google Reader (about 500 messages) since Monday night.  Then a couple that Linda met at the pool knocked on the door, and wanted to talk about genealogy.  I can't resist being an evangelist!  They were nice, and I gave him my card.  I even showed off my blog!  Then I wrote this post. 

On Thursday, we are off in the morning for the site of the Ranslow Smith Four-Mile Inn in Rolling Prairie in Dodge County, the Burnett Corners Cemetery, the Beaver Dam Community Library (which has newspapers from the 1850-1870 time frame), and finally to a hotel near Madison. 

Stay tuned - I'm hoping for more genealogy fun on Thursday and the next three days!

3 comments:

Brian Zalewski said...

You visited just in time for the fall weather to kick in.

Becky Wiseman said...

Isn't it fun to meet people in person that you "know" from their online presence? I've met Jasia and agree wholeheartedly with your assessment of her. Sounds like you had a good time. Best of luck in your research on the remainder of your trip....

RBrass189 said...

Hope you brought a coat for Friday morning. It's supposed to be 36 degrees here in Madison. Best of luck on your research!