2018 Summer Road Trip: Day 5

Sometime in the middle of the night of camping, my poor husband came down with a nasty bug. He had incredible aches and fevers, and he slept terribly or not much at all. Nevertheless, he pushed on, heavily medicated.

We saw some racoons at our campsite in the morning. Nobody got eaten or bitten, so that was a win.

We did some "hiking" in Starved Rock State Park. I say "hiking," but the trails were almost all entirely built up with wooden planks. There was virtually no walking on the original ground.

It was a pretty cool state park. Some other hikers informed me that it is the go-to place for a lot of Chicagoans who want to get away from city life.

After that, we headed to Chicago.

Now, for some back story. I started doing genealogy in 2005, just a few months after Eric and I were married. As one of my assignments, I picked my Sexton family and started working on learning more about them. They are on my dad's side of the family, and my mom mentioned his grandmother saying that her parents were first cousins. I looked at the tree our family already had and figured out right away that Mary Ann Sexton and Sarah Sexton must have been sisters. But who were their parents? Our details about both were pretty sparse, but we had a bit more information about Mary Ann. Researching this family and tracing them in original historic records was my first real foray into genealogy. I think the fact that they were my first family to really trace on my own and learn about on my own, contributes to them being some of my favorite ancestors.

The stories behind these sisters, their parents, and their husbands unfolded to me over the course of my studies. I have continued researching them in the last thirteen years. I had wanted to go to Chicago before knowing I had ancestors who had settled the city (Mary Ann and Sarah's father was a master carpenter who arrived in the city at least by 1836, a year before the the town of Chicago became the city of Chicago). Visiting Chicago was a long-awaited-for wish finally made into reality.

I could easily go back there and spend another 2-3 weeks wandering around, doing various family history things, and various touristy things, but we only had about 2.5 days there.

The first thing we did when we arrived in the city was go to one of the oldest cemeteries in the city (now technically in Evanston), Calvary Cemetery. My Sexton ancestors are buried there, and although their tombstones seem to have gone the way of the world (or possibly never existed, but I consider that doubtful since they were rather a wealthy family), it was still exciting for me to finally be where they are buried. We found the Ennis tombstones, which included Mary Ann, her husband, and three of their children, in addition to one daughter-in-law. The large monument is for the couple's oldest son; at age 21, he took over his father's law practice and became the guardians to several younger siblings when his father died suddenly in 1880. I have read so much about this man, particularly his fierce protection of his younger siblings in the public schools, where they were persecuted for being Catholic in a highly Protestant area, and I just have so much respect for him. And, despite everything I knew about this family, I did not know that Lawrence was a veteran of the Spanish American war. How did I miss that?

I loved teaching my children about their ancestors. It was so meaningful to me.

After finding the Ennis tombstones, we found a shady spot and had lunch. I remember in my classes at BYU that some of my professors talked about taking their kids to cemeteries and plopping the kids down for lunch while my professors did their research. It was a little like that.

After bearing with me at the cemetery, we told the kids we could go to the beach. My phone told us where the closest beach was, I did the parallel parking, we changed clothes, and just as we got to the entrance we learned it was a beach that would cost us quite a bit of money to enter. As we hemmed and hawed about how much we really wanted to go to the beach, it started pouring down rain. Then the lightning started, the lifeguards got everyone out of the water. Decision made, we headed out to our home for the next couple of nights.

My Ennis ancestors lived on Goethe Street, so obviously I had to take a picture of the street sign when I saw it.

2018 Summer Road Trip: Day 4

Our fourth day is sadly lacking in pictures. We went to Nauvoo. A friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend watched the kids while Eric and I went to the temple. It was the first time for both of us in that temple, and my first time to Nauvoo altogether.

We took a few pictures outside the temple afterwards. It was fairly hot, and the kids were over it.

Then we went to the historic town. We parked just in time to hop on a horse-drawn wagon. We thought it was the tour of the town, but it just went around some woods while a guy told stories about people who knew Joseph Smith. Our kids weren't that interested.

We were up against nap time, so we decided to go see the brick yard. Eric said we could watch them make bricks, but really they just talked about making bricks, and then our boys each got a brick to bring home. It was supposed to be about ten minutes long, but it was definitely closer to twenty. Again, our kids were just so over it.

We contemplated visiting one of the houses, but we had just missed the start of the tour and didn't want to wait for another one. With nap time coming soon, we hopped in the van and headed over to Carthage.

After our kids' poor behavior at Nauvoo, I was nervous about how they'd do at Carthage Jail, which is a pretty solemn place. Miraculously, the boys were quite well-behaved. Trixie was still pretty wild, but she didn't have to be ejected from the tour, so I call it a win.

We'll have to do Nauvoo and Carthage again sometime when our kids are bigger, and when it's not so blasted hot.

We snapped a photo outside of the jail and headed to our campsite.

We camped that night at Starved Rock State Park in Illinois. I shared my tent with Felicia, and while Eric was getting his tent ready, Trixie came and partied with us. Our kids all did great with camping, and we will need to do more of it now that they are all competent campers.

2018 Summer Road Trip: Day 3

Day 3 consisted of a trip to the Badlands and a lot of driving.

We found the Badlands interesting, and they reminded us a lot of Goblin Valley here in Utah. We did a few short walks on some paths, and then we did one hike that was a bit longer (3 miles, maybe). It was really hot, but our kids did great.

This was the viewpoint on the longer hike that we did. The boys weren't that close to the edge, but I was really nervous anyway.

I opted to carry Felicia on my back because I knew that when Trixie was ready to give up, I'd rather Eric be the one to carry her. She kept taking his hat off of him, so I ended up wearing two hats for a while. I also found that Felicia would pull my hair, so I wound it up and put it at the top of my head inside my hat. Then she would pull the little baby hairs on my neck. Besides that, she really was a great sport on my back.

Part of the hike involved going up and coming back down this rather steep ladder. Going up was the easy part. Eric didn't think our family could do it, but I really wanted to do at least one decent hike in this park, so I insisted. When it was time to go down, my job wasn't too bad because Felicia was fastened securely to my back, but we knew Trixie couldn't go down this ladder on her own. (She had climbed it pretty well on her own.) Eric successfully brought her down, and the boys came down on their own as well. Worst case scenario, I would have worn Felicia down and then left her at the bottom with Ike. Then I would have taken the Ergo back up to Eric and let him wear Trixie down. (Okay, so a farmer has a sack of grain, a duck, and a dog that he has to get across the river, but his boat only has enough room for...)

The rest of the day was driving, driving, driving. Eric has two iPads for his classroom, and we use them on our trips. We have three kids who can use them, but only two who really understand the concept of set time limits. Consequently, the boys often ended up sharing one of the devices while Trixie got to have the other one with virtually no limits. (It's like the Little House story where Mary and Laura each get a cookie and give half their cookie to Baby Carrie, so the baby ends up with a whole cookie.)

On this particular day, I remember that it took me at least three attempts to pry the iPad out of this sleeping girl's hands so I could let an awake older brother play with it. Every time I'd try, she would wake up and play with it again as if she'd never fallen asleep.

One of the nice things about Felix and Trixie being so near each other in size is that their car seats are actually configured to the same height. That meant we could switch up those two quite frequently, which was necessary since one of them is particularly tyrannical sometimes.

2018 Summer Road Trip: Days 1 and 2

We planned an ambitious road trip this year. When people asked where we were planning to go, I usually sighed and said, "Everywhere," then quickly rattled off the following locations: Mount Rushmore, Nauvoo, Chicago, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Dallas, Colorado. And then I'd answer their questions with how long we'd be gone (15 days), where we'd sleep (a mix of camping, hotel-ing, and staying with family), and how our kids did in the car (meh).

In summary:

-About 5,000 miles

-12 states

-3 national parks

-2 national monuments (plus another one that we drove by and saw from the highway)

-8 first cousins visited (My kids' first cousins)

-6 second cousins visited (Kids of Eric's cousins, but I didn't put Eric's cousins in the first cousins count...)

-3 nights of camping

-3 time zones

-60 bags of chips (the personal-size kind)

-8 audiobooks (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets; My Father's Dragon; Elmer and the Dragon; How We Got To Now; The Dragons of Blueland; Ramona the Pest; Shiloh Season; The BFG)

Our first day was one of our longest drives. We were headed to South Dakota when we saw a sign for Martin's Cove and quickly decided to stop in. Neither Eric nor I had ever been there, and it has some significance in Mormon pioneer history. We were there about 30 minutes, and that was good enough for us.

That night we camped and got rained upon quite a lot. Mine and Felicia's tent held up nicely. Eric and Trixie's tent let in enough water that Eric said it was like being sprayed with a misting spray bottle all night. The boys stayed warm and dry in the van. The rain stirred up something that made my allergies go absolutely haywire, and I struggled all day with extraordinarily itchy eyes.

We went to church the next day in Hot Springs and then went to the Wind Cave National Park. It was very cool and definitely one of the most unique caves I've been in. It doesn't have the usual stactites and stalagmites and instead has this weird box-like pattern throughout its ceilings. As our guide started the tour he showed us the spot where the cave was first discovered by a white guy (Native Americans knew about it for centuries, and it is a sacred place for some of the local tribes). The guide held a handkerchief right next to a hole, and it blew out as if a fan was blowing on it. Thus the name.

The easiest way to dress the girls up in warm clothes was to put a layer of pajamas on top of them. We all stayed adequately warm. Felicia added "wow" and "thank you" to her vocabulary while in the cave. Trixie was frequently scared and begged for Eric to hold her.

We had planned to spend time in Custer State Park that afternoon, but the weather got the best of us. (There was hail on the ground when we exited the Wind Cave.) We did see some bison and prairie dogs as we left Wind Cave National Park and drove through Custer State Park. (We also followed the signs instead of looking at the map, so we ended up coming into the wrong part of the state park, which cost us a fair amount of driving time. Even had we not made that mistake, we wouldn't have been able to see or do much with the thunder storms.)

We made it to Mount Rushmore, which I was really excited about. The weather made it tricky to get a photograph since the presidents were often covered in fog.

When we got there, Ike asked, "Why is George Washington crying?" Eric said, "Probably because of the current occupant of White House." (Speaking of whom, he really does choose the best people, doesn't he?)

We knew we'd struggle to get set up for camping since the rain wouldn't let up long enough to do so, so we stayed in a hotel that night. All in all, I'd say Mount Rushmore was worth the trip, despite the bad weather. Trixie apparently thought so too. She asked me this about a week after returning from our trip:

Europe Trip: Day 9 (Willer-sur-Thur, Colmar, Riquevihr, Ribeauville)

As Eric and I planned our trip to Europe, my one non-negotiable point on the trip was visiting my ancestral hometown of Willer-sur-Thur, France. Now, I don't want to bore you both to tears with genealogy because obviously the two of you who read this are only here to see all my travel pictures. But, I am a genealogist through and through, and now I will tell you about my French ancestry.

For a long time Isadore Gasser was a mystery to me. I knew his name. I knew he married Maggie Browning in 1887 in Alabama, and they had children together. By 1900 Maggie was widowed, and the kids are listed in the census with a father born in France. I didn't know when he was born, who his parents were, what brought him to America, or anything, really. While I was still a student at BYU I used this branch of the family for a project in my Southern States family history class, and I made some headway on Isadore. I learned when he died, and I learned he was a hotel proprietor. I still didn't know where in France he was from or anything about his parents or siblings.

A few years later I took an AncestryDNA test. A couple of years after that I connected with a relative from the Gasser branch of my tree. The relative was descended from Isadore's youngest sibling, and the relative knew a lot more about the family than I did. Suddenly new records were opened to me, and one of my genealogy brick walls was knocked down. My good friend, Allison, used all the information that my relative and I put together, and she located the hometown for the Gassers. She also gave me pointers on using the digital archives so I could extend the family history.

Isadore actually came to the United States with his parents and siblings in 1851 aboard the New England to the port of New Orleans, as a three-year-old child. The family settled in Jefferson County, Kentucky. By 1870, his father had died, and his widowed mother eventually became a baker in a confectionary. (It seems so fitting that a French woman would become a baker in America.) Isadore first married Pauline Pargny on 23 February 1882, but she died on the couple's first wedding anniversary. From what I've been able to discover, Isadore left Kentucky around that time and settled in northern Alabama where he opened a couple of hotels and met and married Maggie Browning. (Her mother ran a boarding house, so it is possible the families were associated because of the hotel industry.)

I have found when I am more invested in researching a family, I love them more, and I feel more connected to them. I was thrilled to be able to visit the family's hometown in France.

This is the church in Willer-sur-Thur. My ancestors attended this church, and it is named after St. Didier. Isadore's father was also named Didier.

I loved the stained glass windows.

I lit a candle for my ancestors, which was special.

This is the font.

We also spent time in the cemetery, looking for my ancestral surnames. The people buried there are more recent than when my ancestors lived in the town. Although European cemeteries are beautiful, they re-use graves and don't always have grave-markers going back to the earliest interments in each spot.

After that we went to Colmar, the Little Venice of France. The church was (of course) beautiful.

And the canals were beautiful too. It was such a perfect little place. Plus we were there in perfect weather. With the heat wave Europe is enduring right now, I am just insanely grateful we went there when we did.

We went through a roundabout (or traffic circle, as the GPS lady called it), and we saw the Statue of Liberty. We actually went through the roundabout an extra time to snap a good photo of her. Many of our modern ideals of liberty come from French writers. I loved reading French literature (in English) when I took a French history class my last year at BYU.

A few years ago, Janssen blogged about her family's trip to Europe, and she mentioned going to one of the towns on which Beauty and the Beast is based. So obviously I had to go there too. We visited Riquewihr first.

And we hiked up to the castle ruins.

Obviously we sang Beauty and the Beast songs along our way. I have several on my phone, so we didn't even have to do it acapella.

It is just such an idyllic little town.

After our hike, we wanted to ride bikes over to the other town of Ribeauville, but we had forgotten that the French take lunch breaks that last 2.5 hours, so we weren't able to do that. I was actually fine with that since I was pretty sure I'd never make it up any of those hills, and I would just end up hating those towns. We drove over to Ribeauville, which is a bit more touristy than Riquewihr, but still lovely.

And of course I did my best Belle pose at a fountain.

I want to give a public thanks to Sophie. She hosts an AirBNB in Riquewihr, but we did not stay with her. (We stayed closer to Willer-sur-Thur.) But Sophie was incredibly helpful to us in Riquewihr, and she went out of her way to point us toward the castle, to identify where we could rent bikes, and to show us where we should get lunch. She even let us use her own bug spray before we headed out on our hike! If you are looking for somewhere to stay in Riquewihr, definitely consider staying in Sophie's place!

Europe Trip: Day 8 (Interlaken, Bern, and Basel)

Eric's one hope for this day of our trip was to row on a boat in Interlaken. We headed out on a scenic drive and saw some beautiful sites.

We went to another gorge, which was cool. It was amazing to think of the engineering involved to build the pathways in the gorge, especially considering that they were started in the late 19th century. Those German engineers know what's what.

We reached Interlaken, and we were immediately excited by how pretty it was and how perfect the lake was.

But then the boat rental place was closed. And there were no other places to rent rowboats. We could have done paddleboats, but why would anyone want to ride on a paddleboat? Or, more accurately, why would anyone want to paddle a paddleboat?

So we picnicked in town looking out at the Jungfrau (the big famous mountain). We had considered doing activities at the mountain that day, and had we known that the rowboat would not come to fruition, that is what we would have done. Ah, hindsight.

We went on our way and saw more beautiful scenery.

We stopped by the Bern Temple. We knew ahead of time that it would be closed for cleaning, but it has some family significance for Eric's family, so we wanted to at least go visit the outside. (Eric's paternal grandfather served a mission in Switzerland; his paternal grandmother has Swiss ancestry; and his maternal grandmother sang at the Swiss Temple dedication in 1955.)

We popped into Basel on our way to France. We decided our favorite historic towns are the ones on rivers. Other than grabbing a bite to eat, we didn't do much there, which is too bad.

And the on we went to France!

All in all, Switzerland was not our favorite. The different currency (they still use the franc), the high cost of everything, and the one activity Eric really wanted to do not panning out made us all pretty ambivalent about Switzerland.