Days 96-99: In central Ohio, visiting Amy’s cousin Jan and her husband Larry, we also got to visit with Jan’s sister (Joyce), her brothers (Jim and John), her mom (Amy’s Aunt Wava), her daughters (Jalena and Dawnel), and two of her grandchildren (Evelyn and Tristan).
Day 98: A short distance north of Jan’s, we visited Lisa and Lisle. Lisa is a former Normandeau colleague of Paul’s from the early 1980s. They took us for a hike on the trails of a nearby county park, Lisa showed us around Ohio Wesleyan U where she is a biology lab supervisor, and we relaxed while trying to catch up on each other’s lives since the last time we saw them when they lived in Ontario some 20 years ago.
Day 99: In southeastern Ohio we began seeing more hills and woods than we had seen for a long time. We hiked the short (5-mile) loop of the Wildcat Hollow Trail, gradually ascending onto a ridge above the hollow and back down through another creek valley. These woods were mostly hardwoods (oaks, black walnuts, sycamores, hickories, maples, beech, etc.) and fairly open with little undergrowth. In addition to black walnuts, we found occasional husks of yellow buckeye nuts on the ground (a tree new to us). The trail passed the decrepit hulk of a one-room schoolhouse, but there wasn’t any indication of how along ago it was abandoned.
Do I have this fact correct? Did Joyce sing at your wedding?
You are exactly right–what a memory to remember Joyce after 37 years! She also baked our wedding cake, a carrot cake (and had to call a plumber to unclog the kitchen drain of all the carrot peelings.