Arkansas Message in a Bottle Mystery Solved!

Wooooohooooooo!!!! We did it, everyone! Thanks to your interest and the tireless efforts of Victoria Price at Arkansas’ Fox 16 News, my family has connected with Larry and Janie Sigler of Little Rock, who sent this message in a bottle in 2007 that my mom found years later! That’s one more message in a bottle mystery SOLVED!

Here’s a crazy thing: The date on the message is May 30, 2007–meaning they sent this bottle 2 days after I found Ed and Carol’s message in a bottle. So when I was on the trip where I started finding messages in bottles, one was being cast out that my mom would later find. I LOVE this kind of thing!

Another cool thing? We have family and friends near Little Rock, so this is a really special connection for us.

We didn’t have much to go on. The note contained a pair of first names (one of which we couldn’t even read) and a hometown. As the old 8-Ball toy would say, the outlook was not good…

But I woke up this morning to discover a message from Janie (not Jamie 🙂 ) on this blog saying that she and her husband were the couple from the note! Another seemingly impossible message in a bottle mystery solved! It felt like Christmas morning!

Then I saw the FOX 16 broadcast which is so cool! Click here to see the video!

Sometimes it’s hard to verify that a person really is the sender of a message in a bottle. But with Janie I could tell she was the real deal right away! Her kind and bright spirit, captured in her brief message in a bottle, came across loud and clear in our exchanges.

The Story of the Message in a Bottle

“I’m still in shock that it was ever found, lol,” Janie wrote to me, “Social media is awesome, isn’t it?”

She explained that FOX 16 News put a plea on Facebook about our little message in a bottle mystery: “My step daughter saw it, and she was pretty sure she recognized my handwriting and called me. It was on the news last night!”

“The cruise was a casino sponsored event from the Horseshoe in Tunica, MS,” Janie continued, “We flew on a chartered plane from Memphis to Miami. If I remember correctly, we made port in Nassau, Bahamas, Phillipsburg, St. Marteen, and a private island owned by the cruise line.”

Janie and Larry on the 2007 during which they sent their message in a bottle.

I have never been on a cruise, so I am always curious about what draws people to them. Janie shed some light on the trip they were on when they sent the message in a bottle. It sounds like it was a pretty great adventure to me!

“One of the most fun things we did was hire a taxi driver in St. Maarten. He drove us all over the island–even to places most tourists don’t see. At the end he gave us his address and wanted us to write him.  The other crazy thing is that the plane from Miami back to Memphis had different colored parts on it and I was scared to fly home on it because it looked pieces together. The flight attendant sat in the back of the plane and cried most of the trip home. This was my second cruise and since then we have probably been on seven or eight others. We met some really nice people that we stayed in contact with for several years.”

Janie and Larry at Lake Tahoe.

As for my mom, she’s pretty awesome–so it’s hard to pick one thing I like about her most. But if I had to, it would be her adventurous spirit and kind heart. I can’t think of two better people to be connected by a message in a bottle than my mom and Janie. The same goes for my dad, and, I imagine, Larry. Two adventurous couples with roots in Arkansas, somehow united by a message in a bottle that washed up on a desolate Caribbean shore. I can’t wait to see what’s next!

Another message in a bottle mystery solved. Not bad for a Wednesday 🙂

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