Last weekend we went on a little adventure with the family - more specifically Roy's family.  His mother, Kathy, and his grandma wanted to visit the cemetery where his great great grandparents are buried (that would be the parents of his maternal grandfather's mother).  The reason it was an adventure was because no one was quite sure where it is since no one had been there in over 20 years!  That's what happens when the cemetery is in the center of a section with crops growing all around. First, we had to drive to another town in another county over an hour's drive away.  Then we drove out into the countryside where Kathy grew up.  Kathy and her mother had a vague idea where it was and got us within a few miles of it.  We couldn't find the exact location, so we asked at some of the houses in that area, but no one had lived there more than a few years so they didn't know the country that well.  Luckily we planned to meet some of Kathy's cousins out there and even though they had never been to the cemetery before one of them had managed to find a map with the cemetery marked on it.  He led us to the road that is closest to the cemetery.  Kathy confirmed that the rough path heading into the section between crops of wheat looked like the right way to go.   Up to this point we had spent at least an hour searching for this spot, so we drove down that path with our finger's crossed.  I think we all breathed a sigh of relief when we saw the gravestones and even more at the realization that some one had recently mowed the cemetery.  We had a nice time admiring the old stones and sorting out some family history that day.  We were smart and used our car GPS unit to get latitude and longitude to make future adventures to the cemetery easier!  We also took a drive around the country to look at the place where Roy's great great grandparents homesteaded and the different places his grandparents and mother lived before moving to Haxtun.

This reminded me of a time when a girl asked me where my family was from. I said Oklahoma and West Virginia.  She asked me which country we were from and I shrugged and said, "England, I think, maybe five generations ago".  She was second generation chinese-american so to her it seemed very odd not to know where your family came from before arriving in the United States.  I was just the opposite, believing that my family's immigration was such old news that I would probably never know for sure.  But even knowing which areas of the US my family is from, I didn't grow up with my family history right in my backyard like they have here.  To be able to visit an old family cemetery or homeplace whenever you like is pretty special in my mind.