That Georgia Biologist

Recently I had the grand opportunity of visiting my grandparents in Florida over spring break!! It was lots of fun to spend some more quality time with them, and over the next few weeks I'll share some photos from my trip. It was a long day of travel from my graduate school up in Michigan. But the farther south I flew, the better the weather became! And when we landed, the sun was shining and the palm trees were waving in the slight breeze! Ahhh....Florida ;) Well, my grandparents picked me up from the airport and we barreled down A1A. It's a beautiful, scenic highway with palm trees and homes. The Atlantic Ocean is on one side and the Indian River on the other. Pelicans fly overhead. Per what I've heard, the Indian River is one of the most biodiverse areas in the nation (yay for biologist me!). En route to my grandparents' home, we stopped at the Barrier Island Sanctuary. It is the visitor center for Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge. My family, grandparents,

So yesterday I returned to Michigan from a week vacation in Florida to visit my grandparents, and tomorrow I'll begin posting articles about the fun times I had down there. But what my articles leave out is a full 25% of my 8 day trip - flying! My life usually consists of seeing a small group of people on a daily or weekly basis. Flying from Indiana (South Bend) to Atlanta, spending a few hours in that mammoth on layover, and then flying down to Melbourne (think east central Florida, right by Kennedy Space Center !) exposed me to a much larger cross section of society (and ditto on the way back!). As someone who is fascinated by people and their behavior, these were some really cool opportunities for me. While South Bend and Melbourne had a few people around, they are pretty small airports with not a whole lot going on. Atlanta, on the other hand, is the busiest airport in the world. 'Nuff said. I have a love/hate relationship with the Atlanta airport. I've grown up i