- Doug McConnell

Over the meandering course of my life, I’ve followed my passion for travel far and wide. I hope to be going even further and wider in the years ahead. I enjoy seeing new territory and learning about other cultures and ways of life, but I also like to revisit some of my favorite places whenever I can.

Here in the United States, though I grew up and have spent most of my life living throughout the West, I’ve also lived and traveled extensively throughout the rest of the country. One of my favorite regions in the East is upstate New York. I went to graduate school at Rutgers in New Jersey, and lived in the Boston area for a few years and took every opportunity I could to get up or over to the Adirondacks, the Finger Lakes and north and west towards Canada. I’ve returned whenever possible, sometimes as a tourist and other times as a television storyteller and reporter.

I have fond memories of the Adirondacks in October when the forest was on fire with autumn colors. I spent time in the area with my parents in the mid-1970’s. The three of us loved baseball and went to many games together, so of course we made a pilgrimage to Cooperstown. Twenty years later I returned with Carl Bidleman and Jack Uhalde, my great television buddies, and we did a story on Cooperstown and the Baseball Hall of Fame. One of these days, we’ll post that story for the fun of it. Besides, even though upstate New York is not exactly in the American West, it is big enough and imposing enough to be almost western in its scale and nature. I often think of that region as the West of the East.

I bring all of this up because California native, Judy McAdoo, has lived there for six years. She’s a wonderful travel writer and photographer, and I encouraged her to post her thoughts and pictures about her adopted New York home turf. She’s done a terrific job and I urge you to check it out: California Girl Goes East.

We’re glad to know that Judy will be moving back soon to this side of the country. We hope that she’ll continue filing stories here on OpenRoad.TV from wherever she is, and we hope you do the same.