Family RV Trip
In 2022 I began traveling the United States with my wife and six kids in our double decker tour bus. We custom built our bus, moved every 4-10 days, built a sizable social media following, got featured in some news and TV shows, visited 38 states, and experienced over 50 national park sites.
Initially, our time on the road was to be a chance to experience the country and connect with the world around us. Unfortunately, living in a bus is not an easy task…especially with 8 people and after a few short months we were ready to give up. However, while visiting Gettysburg, PA we had an experience which changed everything.
Our family was very excited to visit Gettysburg and learn of its history. I’ve long been somewhat of a history buff so I had a natural interest, however, not all my kids carry that interest. Imagine my surprise when my oldest daughter, 10 at the time, asked how our family was connected to Gettysburg. The answer, “we’re not.”
I was so excited for my daughters first sign of interest in history, only to be deflated when I saw the look in her eyes when I told her we had no family ties to this historical site.
That’s when it hit me. There’s no way that this many people fought in this battle and we have NO family ties. That didn’t really seem possible to me, especially knowing my family comes from Pennsylvania. Certainly, I needed to do more research and I needed to do it fast.
So, I opened up a genealogy app, poked around a bit, and found a way to “see” if specific individuals at Gettysburg were my ancestors. It worked! It was a cumbersome process, but it worked. I found multiple relatives through multiple lines that connected our family to Gettysburg.
That feeling of being connected to such a significant historical event has carried with me for the past few years.
Upon leaving Gettysburg we tested out our cumbersome method for making connections at more historical sites from Boston to New York and all along the east coast.
Eventually we figured out how we could use this method to find out if we were related to living people who we spent time with around the campfires. Every time we moved to a new RV park we’d have a campfire with new friends. We’d share our “party,” or as we call it “campfire,” trick and our friends became family.With the experience at Gettysburg we found purpose in our travels. We discovered that our common connections that link us all together made our travels exciting. We also learned that we could share our love of genealogy with our newly discovered extended family and they too began experiencing a new joy in traveling and genealogy.