For Immediate Release: February 24, 2005
Contact:
Andy J. Flynn | Public Relations | Adirondack Park Agency
contact@apa.ny.gov | (518) 327-3000
PAUL SMITHS, NY – Five guest speakers will take visitors around the world during the annual Armchair Traveler Lecture Series at 1:30 p.m. every Wednesday in March at the Adirondack Park Agency Visitor Interpretive Center (VIC) in Paul Smiths.
On March 2, Frank Lescinsky, of Lake Placid, will talk about his travels to the Southern Hemisphere in a slide presentation titled, “Wandering Around Australia.” Lescinsky and his wife, Lethe, have been to Australia seven times.
“First in 1986 and most recently this past November,” Lescinsky said. “We have been there twice for our sons’ weddings to Australian wives and several times to visit our son who now lives in the Melbourne area.”
Most of the Lescinskys’ travels have emphasized camping, hiking, visiting national parks and enjoying nature in general. They have been to destinations such as the Great Barrier Reef; the mountains and the coastal plain of Queensland down into New South Wales; the dry interior around Alice Springs and Ayers Rock; the monsoon forests of Kakadu National Park near Darwin; southwestern Australia; Victoria; Tasmania; Sydney; Canberra; Melbourne; Adelaide; Cairns; Broken Hill; Darwin; Perth; Hobart; and the opal mines at White Cliffs.
“We have seen and photographed animals from kangaroos to lizards to penguins, and a myriad of wildflowers,” Lescinsky said. “We have seen most of Australia, except for the deep deserts and the northwest.”
The next Armchair Traveler Lecture will be held on March 9, when Saranac Lake resident Chris Knight presents a slide show on the Haleakala National Park at Maui, Hawaii. The rest of the lecture destinations will be: Ireland and Norway, by Anne Diggory, March 16; Argentina, by Ned Rauch, March 23; and Russia, by Keith McKeever, March 30.
The Armchair Traveler Lecture Series is sponsored by the St. Regis Restaurant, Route 86 in Paul Smiths.
“Jamie and Cindy at the St. Regis Restaurant are outstanding neighbors here in the Paul Smiths community and deserve kudos for their continued support of VIC programs,” said Senior Public Information Specialist Andy Flynn. “With their help, we can give something to our March lecturers, who volunteer their time to present high-quality presentations to the public for free.”
Each lecture is open to the public and starts at 1:30 p.m.
The New York State Adirondack Park Agency operates two VICs, in Paul Smiths and Newcomb, which are open year-round from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily except Christmas and Thanksgiving. They offer a wide array of educational programs, miles of interpretive trails and visitor information services. Admission is free.
The Paul Smiths VIC is located 12 miles north of Saranac Lake on Route 30. For more information about the VICs, call Paul Smiths at (518) 327-3000 or log on to the centers’ Web site at www.northnet.org/adirondackvic.