Adventures

We never went anywhere when I was a child, possibly because my father had flown around the world (literally) during and after World War II. By the time I graduated from high school I had visited Quebec City with the French club and Washington DC as a participant in the All-Eastern Orchestra. My restricted universe widened tremendously in college, by being a soil science major with an interest in international agriculture. The summer between my sophomore and junior year I started working at the Soil Testing Lab, running particle-size analysis. My supervisor took me on some soil survey trips, so I got to see more of the rural parts of New York State. In the fall of my junior year, I started Soil Judging--an activity that engages students in evaluating the characteristics of soils in the field. The regional contest was held at Cornell itself and we placed second, so we got to got to Nebraska for the National Contest in April. The coach took us on a week-long ride across the country, stopping in Ohio to see the hilly coal country, and across Interstate 80 to Lincoln. We were really jazzed about seeing loess, the windblown silt that we had been reading about. The next year, I was a top soil judger, part of the team that won the National Soil Judging Contest at the University of Arkansas in 1982 (Trophy Picture). I also did a winter session study abroad to see agricultural practices in Mexico. This was a graduate course with participants of all ages, including a couple who had retired from the Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN and a number of undergraduates. This was my first time on a plane, from Syracuse to Chicago to Mexico. At that time you didn't even need a passport to travel to and from Mexico. Not only did we get to see agricultural practices primarily in southern Mexico, but we also toured the Mayan ruins at Palenque (2 pictures). After I graduated, my parents gave me a trip to California as a graduation present. Naturally I chose to go to graduate school in a location I had never visited, Gainesville, Florida. Once again, my field project was in the Panhandle, northwest of Bonifay. I also accompanied my advisor on numerous trips around the state and to the US Virgin Islands. Once I moved to Baton Rouge, my now husband took me out west to see the Rockies, Colorado Plateau, the Tetons, Yellowstone, and everything in between. Dinosaur footprints in the panhandle of Oklahoma. Friends of the Pleistocene field trips. We continue to explore North America. Once we moved to Brockport, we started exploring Canada. In 1998 we drove the Trans-Labrador Highway (a dirt road) from Labrador City on the Quebec border to Goose Bay. In 2007 we drove all the way to Tuktoyaktuk, NWT along the Alaska Highway through British Columbia and the Dempster Highway from the Yukon to the NWT. 14,000 miles. In 2013, we traveled to Newfoundland, an amazing place with icebergs, puffins, mantle rock, and Vikings. I've added a few pictures from our trip to Oregon in summer of 2016. Yes, we drove from western NY, through Canada. Summer of 2017 we visited my dead ancestors in Sullivan, New Hampshire and Selma, Nova Scotia. I knew there was a reason I enjoy visiting Canada so much.