Turner Trip Origins

The last couple Flashback Friday's I've been talking Turners, getting ready for a trip where I would spend time with some Turner cousins, some I've met, others I had yet to meet. 

Here's how the trip came about.

Since my trip out west to see Ruby, I have tried to be more intentional about getting stories written down, photos identified and trying to spend time with family and especially those who have a link to our past. You may remember a blog entry I wrote about different types of vacations and how I had decided that I wanted to try to work in more short trips or "Heritage Vacations" to meet with family members or visit places that meant something to our family history. I also thought it would be cool to do a "Social Media" vacation, meeting up with people from my past that I had re-connected with via Facebook. All this has been kicking around in my head, but time and work seems to always get in the way.

A few years ago, our cousin, Jane Sanders, who is the family Rock Star when it comes to genealogy,  gave us a list of Turner cousins and their addresses and email. I stuck it away with other papers. Sometime later, I wrote a blog entry about Grandpa Bryant's Dillinger story and decided to send it to all the cousins who had an email address on the list.

Fast forward to the age of Facebook. I became friends with Jane and slowly started to add other Sanders and Spindler cousins as friends. One of the cousins that friended me was Cynthia Kent. I had to look at Jane's list once again to see where in the line up Cindy came into play. Cindy and Becky were Aunt Jess' granddaughters. Their mom was Nancy Spindler, who married Clay Kent.

Cindy shared great memories of coming for visits and spending time at Aunt Jess' farm, Aunt Helen's farm and visiting Grandma Bryant. Clay worked for Oscar Mayer and they lived in Wisconsin, Oklahoma and the family ended up in North Carolina.

One day I got a message on Facebook from Cindy asking if I'd ever been to South Carolina and that Jane and I should come visit in September...and that yes, she was the bossy one! 

Recognizing that this fit in perfectly with the kind of vacation I had thought about, I asked for the last week in September off, never dreaming that I would actually make this trip across the country to spend a week with people I've never met!!!

But that is exactly what I did and am SO glad that it worked out. I got to spend time with some of the Sanders cousins, who I had already met once or twice over the years, but never had spent much time with and then I got to meet Cindy and Becky, our southern cousins. And oh, yeah, it all happened right next to the Ocean!

Then on the way home, I got to spend time with some friends that I had not seen in 20+ years.

Mission accomplished.

Directions to here:

Stay tuned for more pics, reunions and introductions!