User:Elle317K

About Me
I am a hedonist, an adventurer, and a seeker of truth. I am a scientist and therefore love logic and reason, but I also believe in beauty and wonder. I am 28 years old and teach science for a living.

This page will hopefully give any visitors an idea of where I am coming from when I write or comment in Wikipedia. Anyone who wishes to may contact me via e-mail regarding any of my contributions.

WikiPurpose
I always appreciate seeing pictures of things that I am reading about on Wikipedia, but there are sadly few, especially of the obscure things I tend to look up.

I am also a photographer of mild talent and no note, so this is what I plan to contribute, for the most part... pictures of places and things that I can readily get to from my home in Wichita, Kansas or my travels around the state and the country. I am particularly interested in ghost towns of the West.

My Travels
Though I was raised a military brat and have no official "hometown," much of my family currently lives and many years of my life were spent in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

I am constantly being riveted (often by Wikipedia articles!) by this place or that and start wondering about going there. Usually these are places like rural Mongolia, New Caledonia, or the Kamchatka Peninsula. I will spend weeks researching these places and looking at photographs. But I have never traveled to anywhere outside of North America.

This is absolutely not due to an Ugly American Complex, but simply due to the constrains of my own life. There are fascinating places everywhere on this beautiful planet of ours... the truth is that none of us have very far to go to find a place of excitement, solitude, or adventure.

I have been to 48 of the 50 US States. I plan to have the lower 48 by the time I am 30 {done! 29 years, 6 months, 20 days}, then add Alaska and Hawaii by 40. Once I'm done there, I will start on the Canadian Provinces (I have 3 now), and after that the states of Mexico.

I have seen some fantastic things: the rich, black soil of North Dakota; the deep, earthy woods of central Maine, the slow, easy pace of live in the coastal Carolinas.

For one reason or another, I have always been drawn to Alaska. I plan to move there in a few years, and hope I will stay for many.