Well it’s a bit past vacation time… at least summer vacation time. I live in Canada so we are seeing the leave gently fall as well as the temperature. But I’m excited because my husband and I leave on vacation on Saturday. My husband; Kevin has decided that he want to have somewhere to go to get away from the winter from time to time so we are taking our motorhome to Arizona. Then we can park it and when we have a week or so available we can fly to Arizona (3 hour flight) and enjoy some warm weather.
But the exciting part of going on this trip is that after I arrive in Arizona myself and my sister-in-law’s mom; Melody will be travelling to Florida to go on a Panama cruise. Panama is exciting but as I’ve told a few people; “I could be cruising the North Saskatchewan for all that matters”. I say that because the important part of this cruise is it’s a DNA Cruise. So I will be spending 10 days with three of the leading genetic genealogist; CeCe Moore, Blaire Battinger and Angie Bush.
We get to enjoy 4 days of lectures (while we are sailing) and then each evening there is a one-hour get together for open discussion. There will be lectures on the various tests and testing companies and then on to more involved DNA subjects; such as, Gedmatch and triangulation and the future of genetic genealogy. One of the hi-lites for me will be my one-on-one with CeCe Moore on the first day of the trip. I’ve been pondering for over a week as to what I will ask her.
DNA seems relatively new but I recall when I was in Junior High School my science instructor taught us about Mendel’s Law. Little did I know that that was my introduction to DNA and I was hooked even then. Here is an excerpt from the website “DNA From The Beginning” .
Johann Gregor Mendel (1822-1884)
Father of Genetics
Gregor Mendel, through his work on pea plants, discovered the fundamental laws of inheritance. He deduced that genes come in pairs and are inherited as distinct units, one from each parent. Mendel tracked the segregation of parental genes and their appearance in the offspring as dominant or recessive traits. He recognized the mathematical patterns of inheritance from one generation to the next.
So as you can see DNA isn’t that new. But genetic genealogy is new and I hope to bring a lot of information back and to pass it along to you.