Many years ago my mother spent a wonderful summer day getting lost on back country roads in North Carolina looking for old family cemeteries. It was hot and sticky (welcome to N.C. in the summer), many of the cemeteries were hidden in the middle of corn fields (again, welcome to N.C.), and we spent as much time retracing our steps as making progress. Yet, it was a wonderful day filled with those "Wow!" discoveries. We stopped in small towns where relatives still live and met new family members, while catching up with others my mother remembered from her childhood. We did discover a few family cemeteries and received clues to a few others which still remain on the missing list. And we bonded with our shared history in a way that census records on the Internet just can't provide. And every year we keep talking about doing it again!

Whether you plan to visit a cemetery or archive, or walk on your ancestor's homestead, combining a summer vacation with a genealogy research trip can be not only rewarding but fun for you and your family. The key is planning. If you plan to visit a research facility, then ask the right questions in advance of your visit; believe me, it's frustrating to drive for hours to visit a courthouse only to find it closed for renovations. You'll also want to scout out the location of any cemeteries or family homesteads, perhaps plotting them on a map using a free service such as Google Maps. A navigation system is also handy for these trips - I wish we had one for those back country roads all those years ago!