I thought I had to work over the weekend, and was ready to do so. While I was out looking for headstones yesterday, trying to do that every weekend, I got a text that said I didn’t need to come in after all. Kinda bummed, like the extra money.

Yesterday I went to the Burlington Cemetery and the Otto Cemetery. I found the headstones of all five requests. Very cool. One of the requests I had had for a few weeks. I could not find the lady anywhere in the cemetery. The smaller cemeteries do not always have a directory and map, so I have TO WALK THE WHOLE CEMETERY. Which is cool I guess, since that is why I started, help someone and get more exercise. After I tried to find her the first time I called the caretaker of the cemetery. She knew the person many years ago. She also knew the headstone was there, I had just overlooked it somehow. I later looked up that cemetery and found an old database list online, put up at sometime by someone who was a caretaker. They listed every single burial in the cemetery. (There are lots of those old records online, found one yesterday for some people not listed on findagrave at all, yet I took about 6 pictures of headstones, found out ALL are related too, just cuz of the list). Anyway, on that old list, I found the lost relative, with a different last name, at this point, we already knew she had been married three times. But…on the list I found the relative, it referred you to yet ANOTHER name. Heheheh The fifth spouse, the last, that is the name used at the time of the burial. So, I found her. Guess what, she was the SECOND TO THE LAST headstone I searched. I walked through that whole cemetery and was beginning to despair of finding the person again. There it was. Wish I had known to start there at the beginning rather than end up there! Sheesh.

I took pictures of every single headstone in the Otto Cemetery. It is a beautiful and old cemetery. Pioneers are buried there, they have a special tiny plaque on their headstones.

Pioneer - Otto Cemetery

Here is a close-up (crop) of the little plaque:

Pioneer - Otto Cemetery

Isn’t that something??  I don’t know who, or what, organization makes the decision a marker can have the plaque, but I think it is a WONDERFUL idea.

Very interesting. There were a few headstones I did not get shots of, the pine trees are so old and beautiful, with branches all the way down the trunks to the ground. There were some old ones underneath those branches, but I myself, being of the older persuasion, just could not get UNDER those branches, I tried, with a myriad of thoughts running through my brain. “Will I be able to get back up” being the most prominent. I could not bend down to see them properly, they were literally about 6 inches high, very small markers, and I am too old and fat for that now.

While there I also saw two HUGE JACKRABBITS!!! I have never seen one before. I was at the bottom of the small hill the cemetery sits on, happened to look up towards the top and see what I thought was a huge rabbit. It didn’t move. I thought maybe it is a rabbit headstone for a child. I thought that because I also thought it was too big to be a plain old little wabbit. About the time I am thinking, “if that thing were to come towards me, I’d run.”, it reared up on it HUMONGOUS legs, front paws in the air, like a horse rearing, and just stayed there for a sec. I almost crapped my pants. It took off. I was so dumbfounded I could not move fast enough to get a picture. A while later I saw another go streaking across the cemetery, I was unprepared once again. I had just looked up in time to see it take off. Never, ever in my life have I see one like that. I told my sister about it, seems she had a pair living in her fields. Never knew. It was terrific to see.