A New Travel Tradition Inspired By Family History

In my previous blog post, I shared stories and photos from the family trip we took to New York City in November. In that post, I briefly mentioned that my kids had the unique experience of seeing their great-great-grandpa’s name on the Immigrant Wall of Honor at Ellis Island. As we looked at his name, Nikki told the kids the story of his journey to America, traveling by boat from Italy all alone at the age of 16. That is where I ended the story, but as it turned out, the end of that story was the beginning of another.

Nikki and I both felt that this experience struck a chord with our kids that sparked their interest in learning more about their great-great-grandpa. When we returned home from our NYC trip, we started doing more research about him and learned that he and his wife eventually settled in Utah where he became a boilermaker for the Union Pacific Railroad. We were excited to find that one of the original steam locomotives that he worked on was located at a train station in Heber, Utah, just a few hours from our home. We quickly made plans to see the train and take one of the most memorable train rides of my life and one that my kids will remember forever.

You can read the full story about this memorable train ride on Alamo’s travel blog, The Scenic Route. I’m excited to be partnering with Alamo Rent A Car as a Chief Travel Guide for 2019 and I look forward to sharing more travel stories like this one.