A Documentary Travel Journal

In a week or so I will accompany my daughter and her family to the area where I grew up in Texas. I do not get back there often. Funerals are usually the motivation so that the photos I grab are related to that event and snapshots of survivors.

This time I will be traveling with three grandchildren, ages 2, 4, and six. The drive is long. They may not handle it well. This may be the last time they ever make the trip since my elders won't be around much longer.  So, I have decided to create a documentary travel journal. It will allow occasional breaks and let the grandchildren participate.

There will be the usual posed family shots. We will note tombstones at various cemeteries. (My family has left few other notable monuments to record or remember.) At my step-mother's farm, I hope to let the kids interact with the wild hogs, roaming deer, and ostriches at the nearby ranch. Perhaps, the fireflies will be out. (My own children slept through them 20 years ago.) Maybe we'll visit the Peter Pan memorial in Weatherford like we did in 1990.

There will be dinosaurs outside of Holbrook, AZ and the LDS temples in Lubbock, Tx., Albuquerque, N.M,and Snowflake, AZ. All of these things will be noted in the photo journal and photographed with the kids in front of them, but the highlight for me will be a visit to Ft. Sumner, N.M. After all, Billy the Kid is buried there. If now one else is impressed, then, they just take a picture of me standing by his grave. I will loan them the camera and they can put my picture in the journal.