Part 3 of Our Holiday Newsletter

By this time, late October, the foliage was truly glorious. After Wallingford, we went back to Bart's brother's house before heading up to the southwestern part of Massachusetts where Kitty's second Munson side cousin, Carol Manfredi Spelman, and her husband Howard have settled in the woods by a lake. We did a wonderful car tour and hike in the Stockbridge area with Carol.

From Massachusetts, we headed down the very beautiful and empty Taconic Parkway in New York, on a glorious sunny day. There Bart got his only speeding ticket of the trip. We were headed to New Jersey to see Choate friend Will Von Klemperer and wife Barbara who happen to live near Kitty's nephew Geddes. Sadly those Munsons were away on vacation but we had a lovely visit with Will and Barbara.

Now Kitty was finally tired of this road trip, so we hurried back to Texas. We drove from New Jersey to somewhere in Virginia, The next day we drove the Natchez Trace from Nashville in Tennessee down to Tupelo, MS, visiting the grave of Meriwether Lewis on the way. The following morning we visited the home Elvis grew up in before driving all the way home to Dallas.

Back in Dallas, we celebrated Halloween with the neighborhood children. Kitty's mask was too scary for the littlest ones. Then we went off on our next road trip to the Fall Bridge Nationals in Atlanta, where Kitty finally met her Lee/Skjold side second cousin John Quinn. She had been communicating with him about genealogy for many years. John had visited the Skjold family farm in Etne, Norway back in 2010, while Kitty visited it in 2015 (click here for that story). His family had us over for a wonderful Thanksgiving feast, mainly cooked by his lovely daughter Abigail.

After a short stop in Dallas, it was off to California for the winter. We drove to the Palm Springs tournament from San Diego on the back route over the mountains. That lovely tournament was our one year anniversary of getting together. We also had better success at Bridge there, winning over 50 points.

We finished the year with a quiet Christmas meal and Trivial Pursuit with friends at Lynne Feldman's house. We saw the big surf during the last week of the year in La Jolla Cove (below). Then we enjoyed a Bridge pot luck at Lynne's and celebrated the New Year at midnight New York time!

This newsletter is far too long but it really was a year to remember for us!