Believe it or don’t, but it’s been three years since the Big Train Trip. I’m really ready to go again, but circumstances currently won’t allow that. So we started to lay out our virtual genealogical dream trip traveling via Amtrak and other conveyances. We ran into a set of difficulties soon after the beginning of the trip. As a result, we’re restarting the trip. At each stop along the way, we’ll describe what research we’ re going to do, where and how we’re going to do it and other sights to see in that locality.
We’ll start in Sacramento. Our route will take us from California’s capital to Utah’s capital, Salt Lake City. And you know what we’ll do there! From Salt Lake City, we’ll move on to Colorado’s capital, Denver. We’ll spend a few days in and around Denver, then we board the train and head for Kansas City. We’ll keep on heading east from Kansas City to Jefferson City, and then on to St. Louis. While in St. Louis we’ll also step over the Missouri River to Southern Illinois.
From St. Louis we’ll take a short flight to Atlanta, which will be our base for exploring central and western Georgia. When we’re finished in Georgia, we’ll board the train in Atlanta and rumble on to New Orleans. After a couple of days in the Crescent city, we’ll hop back aboard for Houston.
Houston’s location affords us a number of opportunities. We have work to do in Houston itself. We’ll take bus trips from Houston to Milam County, Nacogdoches, Longview, and Shreveport. Shreveport will be a major stopover itself because we need to explore much of of northwestern Louisiana.
We’ll go back to Houston on our way to the Gulf Coast. There we’ll stop in Galveston, Corpus Christi and Rockport. From the from the coast we’ll move north to San Antonio. After finishing up in San Antonio, we’ll move northwest to Austin and Midland. We’ll leave Texas for Albuquerque, eventually going to Los Angeles.
Los Angeles will be a two or three day stop. Then we’ll work our way back to Sacramento via both the coast in the Central Valley by train and automobile.
On each leg of the trip, we’ll describe what is or who it is we’re going to research, the resources will use in that area, the travel options to get there, other historical sites or points of interest.
There will be special editions of The Peripatetic Graveyard Rabbit describing the graveyards we find along the way.
We’ll have regular editions of GeneaBlogie during the trip as well, covering our usual eclectic set of genealogy and historical issues.
Some of the stops on the GeneaBlogie Grand Journey 2010
(Click map to enlarge)
The GeneaBlogie Grand Journey 2010 starts later this week at Sacramento’s historic California Railroad Museum! Join us, won’t you?
