Went to my family reunion today....

On my mom's side----big Catholic family. The gathering wasn't quite as huge as it has been in some years past, but we had a good turnout. Good food---there was a lot of fried chicken and some homemade Rotwurst und Sauerkraut that was to die for: I had two huge helpings. My one remaining aunt was there; she's up into her nineties now, but still strong and in total control of her faculties. She sat with my niece, my sister, and I, along with her son and daughter and their spouses. (My wife didn't come; she wasn't feeling well, and my son had to work a 12-hour shift.)

After the party broke up, my niece decided she just had to drive several miles into the boondocks to visit an old family cemetery (on my dad's side) and see if she could locate a headstone for one of our ancestors so she could take a picture of it. This is a tiny, tiny cemetery, located off what is little more than a two-track; we drove in the gate, and swarms of nasty-looking green bugs rose up out of the grass and bounced off the car windows. I told my niece and my sister if they wanted to get out and deal with the insect life and beat through the wild raspberry bushes looking for this headstone, have at it, but I would wait in the car.

Which I did. They both wandered around out there for probably half an hour; I patiently waited and looked at my phone. The woods right up to the fence was tangled, thick, heavy, and sinister-looking. Any minute, I expected a couple of barefoot hillbillies with shotguns to step out of the pulpwood, fix me with beady eyes, and say, "Yew got a real purty maouth, aintcha, boy?" But of course, none did. My niece never did find the headstone, and we finally left. They wanted to backtrack the way we came, and I put my foot down and made them go straight east until we intersected with one of the main county roads, so I'd know where we were.

When we left the reunion, it was clouding up heavily to the west, and about halfway home, it opened up and just poured. It was raining so hard you could hardly see through the windshield, even with the wipers on high. But, we made it, they dropped me off at home, and they drove off to go to the town they both live in further to the north. All in all, a good day; my back hurts from sitting in those awful straight-backed chairs, but I guess I'll probably survive.

Bob Crowley said:

At your age Wolsley you should just wait in your rocking chair and let your nieces go cemetery sight seeing on their own.

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I hear you talking. But I wasn't the one driving, and as long as I didn't have to go out and beat through the weeds, I was content to wait for them. We all live on the west side of Michigan, not far from the Lake; both sides of the family originated in central Michigan, descended from the earliest white settlers. So, we don't often get over in that neck of the woods; since we were that close for the reunion anyway, my niece didn't want to waste the opportunity.

We're not talking about vast distances here; the family seat from my house is about a 2-hour drive, which is actually pretty close, for American standards (or for Australian ones---your country and mine are about the same size). British people would probably look at it as a titanic length, but it's a matter of perspective; the State of Michigan is about 16,000 square miles bigger than the entire island of Great Britain, so that gives some idea of the scale. (Ireland, on the other hand, is approximately the same size as the State of Maine.....and the entire country of Canada, for all its size, has a total population that is smaller than the population of California. )

Bob Crowley said:

Our family get togethers are far more laid back - drive to the Gold Coast on a highway; good food and a view from the back verandah, maybe with a couple of doggy visitors. Wildlife might be magpies having a bird bath; definitely no cemetries; and padded chairs.

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That sounds pretty relaxing to me.

Bob Crowley said:

Looking at Canada their main cities mostly seem to hug the Great Lakes or the US border.

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That's because you get much further north than that, there's nothing there; it's swampy tundra with no bottom in the summertime and frigid arctic wastelands in the winter. You buy a road atlas of Canada, and north of those border cities you mention, they don't even include the upper parts of the provinces---there's no point, because there are no roads.

I've been to mid-level Canada. It consists of a lot of water, huge rocks, and open space.

Bob Crowley said:

Out of 27 million, more than half of us live in four cities all on the coast - (Greater) Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. I live near Brisbane.

The other capital cities on the coast account for another 1.87 million, with Canberra (ACT capital) adding a further 474,000 but it is inland.

The term "Greater" refers to the city itself plus bordering conurbations. For example, Brisbane (which I know best) includes five main urban centers: Brisbane City, Ipswich, Logan City, Moreton Bay, and Redland City. I live in one of those urban centers.

It's not exactly the wilds of Michigan.

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Well, you have to go north a piece to get to the "wilds" of Michigan. Most of the heavily-populated areas with the big cities (Lansing, Saginaw, Flint, Grand Rapids, Detroit) are south of a line running roughly from Muskegon to Bay City; north of that, you're running into forest and farmland, which gets wilder the further you go. You get into the Upper Peninsula, and then you're really getting into primitive spaces. If you stick close to the highways, you're good, but if you get off the beaten track up there, you're in what's pretty much primeval wilderness. The extreme northern sections of Wisconsin and Minnesota are the same way.

I myself live north and east of Muskegon, in the middle of the Manistee National Forest. It's not as remote as you can get, but it's pretty sparsely populated. The county I live in has a total population of about 26.8 thousand, and my township boasts 858 people total. You get into a place like Ontonagon County in the U.P., and it has a total population of less than 6,000.