Family

If you have been following our Blog you know that we are in New Mexico, but do you know why? As you may or may not know, Dick has been doing genealogy research on our families for quite a few years.

Dick has two cousins in New Mexico that he cannot even remember meeting. So we felt that if we are this close, we better try and see what we can do to visit them. We finally decided to visit only Charles Pedigo because his brother lives a lot further North than we wanted to go.

After leaving Carlsbad we headed north to Tijeras New Mexico where Dick's cousin Charleston Arrlyn Pedigo lives. He now lives on the property that was his mothers'. He divided the property and his daughter, Cary Morris and her family also live on the property.

Here is a picture we got of the family, from left to right Charlene, Darlene, Cary, Janie and grandpa Charles.

On the far right is Jackie trying to get CC out of the picture. Our rig is parked in front of Charles' house and it got so cold at night that our water line froze up. (It was over 7300', and not only did the line freeze, but we had icicles on it!)

We shared a lot of pictures and printed out some that we had and also our family trees that Dick had on the computer. While talking, Charles mentioned that he had a large picture over the piano that was some "old Driver". We pulled the picture down and written on the back was "Edna, this is you grandfather, Dakin". Dick knew immediately who it was; not a Driver but John Robert Dakin, his great grandfather, the father of his grandmother Lily.

What an exciting find, Dick has lots of history on him but has never seen any pictures.

We made a day trip into Albuquerque to have some work done on the truck; that's another story. While there we ran across the Aztec Motel and as usual Dick had to stop to get some pictures on this unique building. By the way it's on the old highway Route 66. Hope you enjoy a little fun.

We went out to lunch at a great brew-pub on Route 66 (sitting outside), and then back to Charles', but before we left Dick decided to call his other cousin and again changed our plans and decided to head further north to meet him and his wife.

So on Saturday in heavy winds we headed north to Espanola New Mexico. It was a little white knuckled because of the heavy winds but we made it. We found an RV park, set up the rig and went shopping. We called Bill Pedigo and as he and his wife Bernadette had planned on being in town we invited them over to visit. We talked about 2 hours and made arrangements to go to their home in the morning after Church.

On Sunday we visited them at their home and they took us up to Taos for lunch and some shopping. We had a great time and Bill was excited that he had a copy of a family tree that was given to him by his niece and wanted to share it with Dick. He handed it to Dick and Dick started to laugh as the tree was made by him several years ago and shared with another cousin. Somehow it got around the family and ended up in New Mexico.

They also took us to to see the gorge of the Rio Grande River. Wow! Good thing we're not afraid of heights as we walked out on the bridge. But Bill says it pales in comparison to the Grand Canyon, which we have yet to see. In the parking lot by the bridge many artists (jewelry, pottery, etc.) set up tables to try to sell their wares to the tourists. Some neat stuff, but we were strong and did not buy.


We headed back to their home in the early evening, and shared pictures and memories (Bill remembered playing with Guy and going to Grandma Lil's), and then back to our home just before dark. What a wonderful time and are we glad that we took the time to visit both families.

To be continued...