The Wedding, The Ford and The Buzzard Tree

          The wedding was spectacular!  Granddaughter Rachel was gorgeous and radiant.  Daniel was beaming and stunning in his Marine dress uniform.  Winesburg and its little white church on the sharp curve may never be the same.

          There were streaming tears and screams of joy when Rachel's sister Rebekah (also a Navy member) wrangled special leave and arrived totally unexpectedly.

          The family – Robyn, Jason and six kids – are exceptionally close, so there was much shrieking and marathon hugging when all were together once again.

          Daniel's family (10 of them) made the journey from San Diego.  Two flew and the others piled into a Ford Explorer for the 3,000-mile, two-day trip.  They arrived just in time for Friday's rehearsal dinner.

          The Saturday wedding day weather was perfect and megapixels cascaded onto memory cards as our families of photographers elbowed each other like paparazzi at a Kardashian Celibacy press reveal.

          At sunup the next morning, the newlyweds were winging their way back to their military bases in San Diego; the Strong (Rachel's) family was packed and ready to caravan to a new ministry life in South Carolina; and the Dominguez (Daniel's) family gathered at Indiantree Farm for a tour they hadn't expected.

          The inner-city San Diegans had never seen so much green and were not to be sent home without a closer look at life in the rural lane.  I slipped into my tour guide persona for a two-hour trek including: buggies swarmed around an Amish farm church site; the rolling, lumpy carpet of patchwork farms; and the Buzzard Tree with its dozens of foul fowl.  And more -- like zebras grazing alongside ostrich and bison, barefoot children bouncing on a backyard trampoline and miles and miles of gravel roads with zero traffic.

          But The West beckoned, and a 43-hour drive lay ahead. So the tour, the visit, the gala weekend came to an end as the Ford Explorer, packed with San Diegans, wedding pictures and a fresh understanding of Amish Country, headed for the interstate.