This article is managed and edited by Andrea Hagner.  Please help to keep it interesting by sending Andrea your travel stories.

WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? / WHERE ARE YOU GOING?

Have you ever eavesdropped on conversations at the PYC? Chances are good you heard talk about trips. One of the things we all seem to have in common is that we have raveled. Or are travelling. Or are planning a trip.

I would like to start a new section on the PYC website that will profile various members of the club, with a focus on their travelling.  When someone volunteers to be profiled, I will send them a questionnaire.  When it is returned to me, I will compose a couple of paragraphs about them and send it back to them for review.  If they want to attach photos, that will be great.  When we are both satisfied, I can post it to the website.  I figure I can do several per month. We can include the names of the new profiles in the monthly update so anyone who wants to can go find it.

I’ve experimented with a couple of people.  Here are a few to show you what  I have in mind:

Thanks,

Andrea

Editor of Traveler's Blog

 

~~~

 

Roy and Marge Schenck

Where does a girl from Kansas find a boy from Texas? In Japan, it turns out.  Courtesy of the US Air Force.  Marge was working for Special Services Entertainment while Roy was stationed in Japan.  Thus began a relationship that has taken them all over the world.

They both started travelling early.  Marge remembers going to Minnesota to visit her maternal grandfather’s old friend from Sweden and Roy remembers going to Pile’s Peak and the Grand Canyon with his folks. Since then they’ve been to England, Germany, Sweden, Argentina, Africa, Italy, France, Mexico, Canada, Holland , and Costa Rica, as well all the islands in the Caribbean, Chile, Peru, Wales and Ireland.  Roy even kissed the Blarney Stone.

 Marge loved visiting Alaska and Hawaii and has fond memories of visiting the Anne Frank house in Holland with a group of girls. She was also moved by visiting the prison where Nelson Mandela was kept in South Africa.  She’s realizes how lucky she’s been to be an American.

Roy remembers paddling a kayak in Costa Rica – upstream, dodging alligators and monkeys. But he doesn’t want to remember being in Boca Chica, in the Dominican Republic.  He and an ATC group had stopped for one last beer when they ran into an ambush. The 82nd Airborn , luckily came to their rescue.

They had a RV for a while and toured 47 of the 50 states . (They still need to visit Oregon, Wyoming and Montana.)

 But these days they prefer to travel by cruise ship when possible.  Both of them agree that the best trip was the last one – to South Africa.  They got to see lots of animals, amazing scenery and fascinating places including the hospital where Christian Barnard performed the first heart transplant.  Someday they’d like to return.  And they’d also like to see Australia and China and maybe go back to Switzerland.  They won’t, however, go to Greenland.  Especially Thule, Greenland.  Roy was stationed there for a year and that was enough.

Roy likes to go on short golfing trips and Marge likes to visit family in Kansas.  She says she stays just long enough to keep from killing her brother. Seems like a good plan.

 

 

 

RANDY PINE

When she was a little girl, her family went to stay at a hotel in Atlantic City where they served dinner with springs of parsley on the plate.  She’s amazed that she remembers that.  I’m not surprised at all.  It’s that attention to detail that makes her such a valuable part of the PYC.

She was born and raised in Lockhaven, PA.  One fate-filled trip involved moving her parents to Silver Springs, Maryland.  The young David Pine picked her up at the pool.  They married and raised two daughters together in the Maryland suburbs of D.C.  NASA brought Dave to this area, where they’ve lived ever since.

Her favorite trip is always the last one she went on, so currently she likes this summer’s Baltic Seas cruise..  Every adventure offers its own highlights, but if forced to choose, she’d pick the week they spent at a Tuscan winery.  They adventured out every day and came home to the winery’s wine, cheese and fruit with the other guests.  The furthest she’s gone was Africa.  Travelling with Sally Smith, she got to see all sorts of amazing animals right where they were supposed to be – not in a zoo.

Asked about her most adventurous trip, she says “every trip that we have taken and rented a car has been a real adventure.  With me as the driver and David as the navigator, we never knew for sure where we’d wind up.”

If she could choose, she’d travel by bus so she wouldn’t have to drive and would still get to see lots.  David is her favorite travel companion, but she also loves her annual sisters trips.  And beach week with her grandchildren.  They regularly go to see the grandsons in Tampa and the granddaughters on Long Island, and to see old friends in Delaware, Charleston and New Jersey.

There are still more trips to come.  She wants to visit Australia, New Zealand and Northern Italy..  This year they’ll travel through the Canadian Rockies.  She would gladly return to Tuscany and to Prague.  But she never regrets any trip they’ve taken.

When asked to share a travel story, this was her reply:  “ It is the unexpected things that make the best stories.  We got to see the headquarters of Reader’s Digest in London because we stopped to ask a question of a very English Gentleman who happened to be the caretaker for the very old townhouse we were standing in front of which was the Reader’s Digest Headquarters.

We met a wonderful trainmaster in a little town in Germany with whom we communicated in pidgin German and finally found out that the tunnel was “kaput” and who set us off on the right road again.

We visited the smallest Scotch distillery in Scotland because we didn’t want to go shopping and our bus driver got us a cab to take us there.  A wonderful afternoon at Edradour Distillery tasting away.”

 

Carol Wood

Carol’s idea of a perfect getaway is a fall weekend with her family at Mountain Lake in the Shenandoah. It’s where the movie “Dirty Dancing” was filmed, but she was more impressed by the little cottage with a  fireplace, the hiking trails, the boats and the kind of wildlife with feathers and fur.

Carol is a native of Americus, Georgia who came as a child to Poquoson with her Dad. He was working a contract at Langley.  She dated a local boy, Jesse Wood. She broke up with him when he enlisted in the Air Force, but then married him when he returned.  They have done quite a bit of traveling, but Carol likes camping trips with their 2 children and 3 ½ grandchildren best.  They are planning a Halloween campout in Glouscester this year.

Her favorite adventure was a cruise to Honduras on a hurricane detour.  Their ship was one of the first to visit, so they got to see the place before it got too spoiled.  They were able to see some spectacular scenery and interact with some very friendly spider monkeys while they were there.  The also got to go to Belize, where they went zip-lining, cave diving, river tubing and rain forest exploring.

Jesse was stationed in England for four years, so he wants to take Carol to see what he enjoyed about those years.  And they both have an Alaskan Cruise on their bucket list … as soon as they find a couple of weeks out of their busy lives.

 

 

 

Larry Svihla

Did you ever wonder why Larry’s email address starts with “flydoc”?  It’s because he’s had three small planes and a helicopter!

 Born and raised near Chicago he started out (like so many Chicago kids) with a trip to the Wisconsin Dells.  But then he and his family went further – summer trips to Europe with lots of time in Lucerne, Switzerland. 

One of his favorite trips was an adventure in Costa Rica.  He rented a car and headed into the back country.  The fact that he spoke no Spanish didn’t deter him. At one point he drove over a 30 foot deep canyon on a chain link bridge. He was visiting an iguana farm on the other side.  He can report that iguanas actually do taste like chicken.

Closer to home, his idea of a perfect getaway is kayaking and climbing in the mountains of West Virginia.  These days he goes on adventures with his favorite travel companion, Margaret. They went to Fantasy Fest in Key West and got body painted on one wild trip.

When he started dating Margaret he was living on a horse farm in Surry.  He asked her to meet him at the Norfolk Airport for one of their early dates and surprised her be flying her in his helicopter to see the farm.  That, obviously, made a good impression.

 Next up is skiing in Colorado and Utah. And he’d like to go back to Switzerland.  His bucket list has a land/water cruise of Alaska on it.

 


Rick and Earleen Corn

Ever wonder why Rick Corn is so charming and laid back? Maybe it’s because he was raised in Jamaica?

His first trip was a flight to Jamaica in 1950 to live with his grandparents while his Dad was in the Korean War.  He split his childhood between there and New Mexico.  Earleen grew up in Macon, Missouri but went to Texas after college to teach.  They met in Corpus Christi while Rick was in the Navy.  The Navy sent them all over the world, but they eventually settled down in Poquoson.  Their traveling, however, was not over.

They once vacationed in Thailand – taking a local bus without knowing the language.  They lost their map, but lived to tell the tale. Another adventure involved flying Aeroflot Airlines to Hungary – via Moscow. Then they sailed the Danube from Budapest to Passau. They return to Jamaica often and love spending time in the Dominican Republic with friends at Lifestyle Vacation Resort in Puerto Plata.. They are taking their grandson to Spain in the Spring, and have a trip planned to Japan with the Fredericksen’s in April.  But they also like to spend getaway weekends traveling around Virginia.

 When asked if there are places he wouldn’t revisit, Rick replied “I have never found a place that I would not go back to.  I might not drink the wine from Taiwan or eat some foods at a Japanese truck stop.”  He would like a return trip to Israel since Earleen has never been. A Rhine River cruise is on their bucket list, too.