WELCOME TO VAGABOND GEOLOGY WHERE GEOLOGY ROCKS!
WHO ARE THE VAGABONDS?
Who We AreWe love traveling! We love exploring, dreaming, and discovering! We've been fortunate that our jobs brought us out of the USA to see the rest of the world. Our travels helped us appreciate America even more BUT also taught us that America doesn't have all the answers; travel humbled us! Everyone should travel...there is so much to see, do and learn in our own country and in the rest of the world.
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Our StoryWe met in Africa towards the end of our careers. During our 6 years in Africa we made a 15 year travel plan. Living in different countries, we leveraged our situation by doing lots of traveling from these home bases. We adjusted our plan from time to time based on life's circumstances.
Below is a PowerPoint file that reviews our travels. We hope you enjoy it and we hope it inspires you! 
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SUPPLEMENTAL INFO ON THE VAGABONDS
Below are questions/answers we've had to develop for a couple of University Newsletters.
This Q&A is for the University of Texas, Osher Life Long Learning Institute (OLLI), Austin
How long have you volunteered as seminar presenters for Life Long Learning programs? How did you get started?
We started by riding the coattails of Sandi’s dad, Don Beaumont, PhD Columbia Univ., who had been asked to teach with him. Given his age, he was concerned about driving to/from Austin so in 2009 he asked us to teach with him. The 3 of us taught one additional semester in 2009, two semesters in 2010, two in 2011, two in 2012 and one in 2013. At the end of 2014 Don passed away and we took a break in 2015. We picked up again in 2016, missed 2017, and have done one semester in 2018, 2019, and 2020.
What do you find rewarding about presenting these seminars?
There are at least five things we find rewarding about these seminars:
First, most underappreciated aspect of teaching is the participants. We often get to know some, although not enough, of them. They all have interesting lives and backgrounds and getting to know them is such a privilege; we touch their lives, they touch ours.
Second, it’s an opportunity for us to implement what we call our hidden agenda, we try to show that science is fun and we ask participants to encourage their grandchildren/great-grandchildren to think about a future in the sciences.
Third, we try to show class attendees that there is critical link between geology and travel. If someone is traveling, geology has likely played an important role at that destination. Explaining the link is what we do. Many times people come up to us and say that they always dodged science classes but they love our classes. In other instances, people come up and say that what we showed them in a previous semester was so interesting that they decided to travel the same trip we did! Both kinds of feedback are rewarding!
Fourth, doing all the preparation work for our classes keeps our own brains from atrophying and it feeds our passion for learning & doing.
Last, we are both having wonderful lives, sure with some setbacks from time to time, but overall, very satisfying lives and this is how we are giving back to our little corner of the world.
Please discuss the seminar topics you have presented and why you developed them.
This Q&A is for the University of Texas, Osher Life Long Learning Institute (OLLI), Austin
How long have you volunteered as seminar presenters for Life Long Learning programs? How did you get started?
We started by riding the coattails of Sandi’s dad, Don Beaumont, PhD Columbia Univ., who had been asked to teach with him. Given his age, he was concerned about driving to/from Austin so in 2009 he asked us to teach with him. The 3 of us taught one additional semester in 2009, two semesters in 2010, two in 2011, two in 2012 and one in 2013. At the end of 2014 Don passed away and we took a break in 2015. We picked up again in 2016, missed 2017, and have done one semester in 2018, 2019, and 2020.
What do you find rewarding about presenting these seminars?
There are at least five things we find rewarding about these seminars:
First, most underappreciated aspect of teaching is the participants. We often get to know some, although not enough, of them. They all have interesting lives and backgrounds and getting to know them is such a privilege; we touch their lives, they touch ours.
Second, it’s an opportunity for us to implement what we call our hidden agenda, we try to show that science is fun and we ask participants to encourage their grandchildren/great-grandchildren to think about a future in the sciences.
Third, we try to show class attendees that there is critical link between geology and travel. If someone is traveling, geology has likely played an important role at that destination. Explaining the link is what we do. Many times people come up to us and say that they always dodged science classes but they love our classes. In other instances, people come up and say that what we showed them in a previous semester was so interesting that they decided to travel the same trip we did! Both kinds of feedback are rewarding!
Fourth, doing all the preparation work for our classes keeps our own brains from atrophying and it feeds our passion for learning & doing.
Last, we are both having wonderful lives, sure with some setbacks from time to time, but overall, very satisfying lives and this is how we are giving back to our little corner of the world.
Please discuss the seminar topics you have presented and why you developed them.
We started teaching with UT OLLI in 2010 and gave a class entitled “Congo to Cape” in which we shared our travels through South Africa, Angola, and Namibia and looked at the sites and their geology along the way. Then over the next 9 years we taught 9 classes, 5 of which were taught at two different OLLI venues each semester.
Our second year at OLLI was called “Vagabonds Tramping through Western Europe” sharing travel sites and associated geology through Portugal, Spain, France and England.
The Third year was called “Acadia to Acadie” and that highlighted the travel sites and associated geology from Texas to New England, to Nova Scotia, to Newfoundland, to Quebec/Montreal/Toronto.
Fourth year was called “Austin to the Arctic,” the story of our travels from Texas to the Arctic Circle in Alaska and discussed sites and their geology along the way through New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, northern California, western Oregon & Washington, British Columbia, Yukon Territory and Alaska.
Fifth year was “East Africa” and that covered travels, and associated geology, thru Kenya, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe.
Sixth year was a series of classes called “Vagabond Oil & Gas” where we developed at fictitious oil & gas company and had participants “invest” imaginary money in different oil & gas options to see if they could become black gold millionaires or dry hole hobos.
Seventh year was one of our favorites entitled “Ancient Pathways, Ancient People” or “Darwin to DNA” (different name at different venues) where we traced the evolution of mankind out of Africa showing many archaeological sites we’ve visited in Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas and how the human species developed over time.
The eighth year started our three year trilogy called “Westward Journeys” with the first year of the trilogy called “Northwest Journey – Corps of Discovery” which reviewed the travels, selected historic figures, and geology of the 1804 Lewis and Clark expedition from Washington DC to Oregon and back.
Year 9 was the second year of the trilogy called “Southwest Journeys – Trail of Tears & the Santa Fe Trail.” This class reviewed the travels, key historic figures, and geology along the Trail of the forced removal of eastern Native Americans to reservations in Oklahoma; and the commercial Santa Fe Trail from Missouri to Santa Fe and on to Mexico City.
Year 10 was the final year of the trilogy called “West Coast Journeys – The Oregon, Mormon & California Trails. As we do in all of our classes, we discuss important travel sites, key historic figures, and the associated geology of the travel adventure.
What are your favorite topics and why?
Actually, we’ve love each semester we teach because we create some wonderful memories of the trips we’ve taken with our talks about them. In fact, on our trips we buy only one souvenir from each historic site we visit, a fridge magnet. We have two refrigerators (one in Texas and one in Louisiana) and both are covered with magnets. At dinner each night, we randomly select a magnet and reminisce about what we saw there. It’s a wonderful way to re-live our travels at dinner time.
We learn so much about the topics we share, for instance learning that the headwall (the face of a waterfall) has been moving upstream at Victoria Falls, learning about the first ethnic cleansing on the North American continent, that of the Acadians in 1755, and learning about DNA in the Darwin to DNA class series.
Teaching encourages us to experience the trips both physically, by taking the trip, and intellectually, by reading much more than we normally would to take a trip, like
- reading the historic journals of
- William Clark on the Corps of Discovery,
- Ezra Meeker on the Oregon Trail,
- Chief Pathkiller II on the Trail of Tears,
- Susan Shelby Magoffin on the Santa Fe Trail,
- J. Goldsborough Bruff (topographical and architectural draftsman for Fremont’s expeditions) on the California Trail.
- researching the environmental sciences behind
- The Okavango Delta in Namibia
- The Atchafalaya Basin in Louisiana
- The Everglades in Florida
- and of course, learning the geology science of
- Plate tectonics (and the cool animation we’ve found that shows how it works)
- Rocky Mountain formation
- Yellowstone super volcano, Mt. Everest, the Alps, and the Himalayas, etc.
Three sets of semesters stand out for us:
- The Vagabond Oil & Gas – one of the class participants had to travel to Asia and would miss our last class where we would reveal which of the fictitious Oil & Gas investments would win. This person called us from Asia wanting to know if he had become a millionaire or a hobo. Now that is total involvement in our story!
- The Darwin to DNA – we had to study the biology of DNA and then be able to talk about it. This pulled us away from our areas of expertise and caused us to learn so much. As an added benefit, Rocky got his DNA sequenced and learned that he wasn’t where he thought he was from – just like the TV commercial!
- The Trilogy Semesters – these caused us to travel extensively through the American west (and some of the east) and see places we otherwise would never have seen. We learned so much about how America expanded west, why, who won, and who lost in the process.
When you both retired in 2002, what did you plan to do? How did you feel about retirement at the time? How do you feel about it now? What advice would you offer to others about retirement?
Both our careers were quite demanding as we’re sure most people’s careers are. Rocky had been directing projects around the world and Sandi worked on new exploration projects. Like most things we do, we gave it 110% and were getting pretty burned out. Rocky requested a retirement package but was turned down because, unbeknownst to him, our company was about to be merged with another. At the merger, we both took retirement. We were 52 at the time so that left lots of time, we hoped, to do/see/learn all the things that we had been collecting in our bucket lists.
When we retired in 2002, we developed a “15 year plan” to live six months in one new country each year, becoming Travelers rather than Tourists. We hoped that at the end of 15 years we would have experienced most of our bucket list. Unfortunately, life got in the way, as we chose to help take care of family members, two precious little dogs and one big Alley cat. So far we’ve lived in France, Portugal, South Africa and the US during our eighteen years of retirement.
How do we feel about retirement?
Unequivocally, it was the best thing we ever did. So much of the stress of work vanished (except during class preparations!). We had seen a lot of places on the earth before retirement but at a blazing pace. After retirement we were able to “smell the roses” along the way.
Advice about retirement?
Needless to say, retirement is a big step and needs years of preparation. But without a plan the “ship” of your life moves in any direction the wind blows. Planning for retirement is essential. Rocky had an experience early in his career that put him on the trajectory to retire early. One of his carpool buddies worked till 65 then died the following year. That made a serious impression on Rocky. We didn’t want that to happen to us, so getting out early was a necessity. Once out, plan your next phase of life before you look up one day and find that your life is nearly over.
We developed a very methodical process of planning for after-retirement and would be happy to share it with anyone interested. Just ask us.
How much of your time is now devoted to developing and presenting seminars to seniors?
Our time roughly breaks out like this: 1/3 of the year helping/taking care of family, about 1/3 of the year giving back by preparing /teaching, about 1/3 of the year traveling, gathering new material & experiences to present.
During the six weeks of winter classes we teach about 500 people over four locations each week. One location is an independent living facility; the other three are life-long learning institutes.
Your website says you love traveling, exploring, dreaming, and discovering. How much of your time do you spend traveling now? What are some favorite places and why?
We both spent much of our professional and personal lives living, working, and traveling internationally. Prior to retiring Sandi lived in 11 US states, Russia, and Africa; Rocky lived in 2 US states and England, Denmark, Africa, and China. Our paths crossed in 1996 in Africa. Since then we've lived in 6 countries on four continents and have traveled to over 60 countries on our adventures to "Live, Learn, and Do."
As mentioned above, we started living in a new country for six months each year. We did that for three years, but then life got in the way and we switched to our backup plan: camping our way around North America. So far have camped in seven of Canada’s ten provinces and two of its three territories and all states except Michigan. We've done several unforgettable camping trips but two of the most memorable are two seven- month trips: one from Texas to the Arctic Circle in Alaska spending a month each in Oregon, Washington, British Columbia/Yukon, & Alaska. The other memorable trip was from Texas to Newfoundland, Canada including months in New England, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, and Ontario. We saw all the places where Sandi grew up in New England and places of Acadian heritage in Canada that were meaningful to Rocky.
We love learning and we’ve camped our way through 39 Civil War sites, followed the Lewis & Clark trail from Missouri to Oregon and followed the Oregon Trail back to Missouri. We’ve followed the Trail of Tears east on the southern route and west on the northern route. We’ve trekked our way from Texas to Key West along the west side of Florida through the Everglades and back up the east side through Miami & Cape Canaveral. We’ve followed the Santa Fe & El Camino Real Trails to Mexico and the Mormon and Gold Rush trails to Utah & California. We’ve hunted for diamonds in Arkansas, gold & rubies in California, sandstone fossils in Utah, limestone caves in Texas, salt domes in Louisiana, and meteor craters in Canada, Arizona and Texas. We’ve hiked and toured 41 of the 61 National Parks of America, and toured 10 of the 13 Presidential Libraries. We’ve looked through solar scopes & radio telescopes in New Mexico, huge optical telescopes in Texas, and the radio telescope in Puerto Rico. We’ve toured famous archaeological sites overseas and in the US, most notably, the “Lucy” site in Tanzania and the “Cradle of Mankind” in South Africa. Because we lived in Africa for many years, we’ve camped 25,000km around South Africa/Namibia/Botswana, have taken 16 safaris, trekked with Chimpanzees in Tanzania (haven’t done Gorillas, yet!), bungee jumped 400 ft over the Zambezi River in Zimbabwe, and driven across Kenya. Finally, we love art & architecture and have chased down famous Guggenheim Art galleries in New York, Italy, and Spain; most major art galleries in Europe; Frank Lloyd Wright architectural sites in the US; and countless churches and castles in Europe.
To say which location was our favorite is impossible, there is so much variety and every experience is unique. Travel has opened our eyes to the world; it helps us see how great America is, and what other countries have accomplished. It is humbling to see so much and know how lucky we are to have had the opportunity.
As you can see, we love travel and love learning. The last slide we sometimes show in our classes is a statement we seriously believe; a combination of Mark Twain quotes, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness . . . Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”
This Q&A is for Senior University, Georgetown
We have an amazing faculty at Senior University and thought you might want to get to know them a little better, so we had an opportunity to ask Sandi and Rocky a few questions.
How long have you been a volunteer with Senior University?
“2020 will be our twelfth year of teaching at Senior U. In 2009 Sandi’s Dad, Don Beaumont, invited us to team-teach a winter session at Senior University about The Magic of Oil Exploration — Don taught geology, Sandi taught geophysics, and Rocky taught petroleum engineering. We loved working with Don, he was so passionate about geology that it rubbed off on us. As time went on we shared more and more his passion for geology. After Don’s death, we continued teaching; layered human interest stories with the geology because humans live in and are influenced by the geologic world. We find that class participants enjoy the combination of human interest and science.”
What advice would you give to new instructors?
“Be prepared! . . . . for more research than you think it will take . . . .for more time than you have to spend . . . . for more knowledge than you ever expected . . . and best of all — for more new friends than you can imagine!“
How did you become interested in Senior University and what influenced you to continue to teach over the past several years?
“That first experience teaching with Don Beaumont in 2009 was so rewarding that it led to twelve years of our teaching at Senior University. So far we’ve taught 90 classes in 15 unique courses: from a study of the evolution of humans (Darwin to DNA), to a study of the natural resources in North America (Our World, Our Resources), to travels in Africa (Congo to the Cape), to the westward expansion in North America (Three Year Trilogy – Westward Journeys. Through these classes, we’ve met so many wonderful people, shared so many good times and learned so much. The old adage, “if you really want to learn something, teach it” is so very true. And the learning is our “raison d’être.”
Favorite book that you have read? Why is it your favorite?
“We seldom watch TV because we are always researching and reading material for our next course. When taking long auto trips to research our next topic, we listen to audiobooks. It’s impossible to name a favorite.”
What is the most rewarding thing about volunteering with Senior University?
“Every year we look forward to developing a new topic that we hope will intrigue Senior University members enough to attend our classes. On the first day of each class, it’s so rewarding to see many of our friends and some new members arrive by 8:30 on cold, dark Monday mornings to share our next adventure. It’s the smiles, the appreciative comment, the enthusiasm of someone running up to show us a book, a new rock, or a special fossil they’ve found or sand sample from a new beach. It’s the learning, always about the learning; their learning and our learning. It’s a beautiful thing.”
Who is your biggest inspiration?
“Sandi’s dad, he was an inspiration on so many levels; as a researcher, as a teacher, as a parent, and as a friend. Rocky’s mom, she could fill a room with her smile, her laughter and her joie de vivre!”
What is your Favorite food?
“Sandi loves steak and lobster. Rocky likes anything that doesn’t eat him first, especially Cajun-Creole, French, Italian, Thai, Chinese, German, Scandinavian, Greek and, of course, we both definitely love Texas BBQ!”
How many countries have you visited? How many states?
“We both have spent much of our professional and personal lives living, working, and traveling internationally. Prior to retiring Sandi lived in 11 US states, Russia, and Africa; Rocky lived in 2 US states and England, Denmark, Africa, and China. Since we met in 1996, we’ve lived in 6 countries on four continents and have traveled to over 60 countries on our adventures to “Live, Learn, and Do.” When we retired in 2002, we developed a “15-year plan” to live in one new country each year, becoming Travelers rather than Tourists. We hoped that at the end of 15 years we would have experienced 80% of our bucket list. Unfortunately, life got in the way, as we chose to help take care of family members, two precious little dogs, and one big Alley cat. So far we’ve only lived internationally in France, Portugal, South Africa during our eighteen years of retirement.
“As you can see, we love travel and the last slide we sometimes show in our classes is a statement we believe; a combination of Mark Twain quotes, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness. . . . Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime. ”
Get to know about more of our faculty in the near future.
How long have you been a volunteer with Senior University?
“2020 will be our twelfth year of teaching at Senior U. In 2009 Sandi’s Dad, Don Beaumont, invited us to team-teach a winter session at Senior University about The Magic of Oil Exploration — Don taught geology, Sandi taught geophysics, and Rocky taught petroleum engineering. We loved working with Don, he was so passionate about geology that it rubbed off on us. As time went on we shared more and more his passion for geology. After Don’s death, we continued teaching; layered human interest stories with the geology because humans live in and are influenced by the geologic world. We find that class participants enjoy the combination of human interest and science.”
What advice would you give to new instructors?
“Be prepared! . . . . for more research than you think it will take . . . .for more time than you have to spend . . . . for more knowledge than you ever expected . . . and best of all — for more new friends than you can imagine!“
How did you become interested in Senior University and what influenced you to continue to teach over the past several years?
“That first experience teaching with Don Beaumont in 2009 was so rewarding that it led to twelve years of our teaching at Senior University. So far we’ve taught 90 classes in 15 unique courses: from a study of the evolution of humans (Darwin to DNA), to a study of the natural resources in North America (Our World, Our Resources), to travels in Africa (Congo to the Cape), to the westward expansion in North America (Three Year Trilogy – Westward Journeys. Through these classes, we’ve met so many wonderful people, shared so many good times and learned so much. The old adage, “if you really want to learn something, teach it” is so very true. And the learning is our “raison d’être.”
Favorite book that you have read? Why is it your favorite?
“We seldom watch TV because we are always researching and reading material for our next course. When taking long auto trips to research our next topic, we listen to audiobooks. It’s impossible to name a favorite.”
What is the most rewarding thing about volunteering with Senior University?
“Every year we look forward to developing a new topic that we hope will intrigue Senior University members enough to attend our classes. On the first day of each class, it’s so rewarding to see many of our friends and some new members arrive by 8:30 on cold, dark Monday mornings to share our next adventure. It’s the smiles, the appreciative comment, the enthusiasm of someone running up to show us a book, a new rock, or a special fossil they’ve found or sand sample from a new beach. It’s the learning, always about the learning; their learning and our learning. It’s a beautiful thing.”
Who is your biggest inspiration?
“Sandi’s dad, he was an inspiration on so many levels; as a researcher, as a teacher, as a parent, and as a friend. Rocky’s mom, she could fill a room with her smile, her laughter and her joie de vivre!”
What is your Favorite food?
“Sandi loves steak and lobster. Rocky likes anything that doesn’t eat him first, especially Cajun-Creole, French, Italian, Thai, Chinese, German, Scandinavian, Greek and, of course, we both definitely love Texas BBQ!”
How many countries have you visited? How many states?
“We both have spent much of our professional and personal lives living, working, and traveling internationally. Prior to retiring Sandi lived in 11 US states, Russia, and Africa; Rocky lived in 2 US states and England, Denmark, Africa, and China. Since we met in 1996, we’ve lived in 6 countries on four continents and have traveled to over 60 countries on our adventures to “Live, Learn, and Do.” When we retired in 2002, we developed a “15-year plan” to live in one new country each year, becoming Travelers rather than Tourists. We hoped that at the end of 15 years we would have experienced 80% of our bucket list. Unfortunately, life got in the way, as we chose to help take care of family members, two precious little dogs, and one big Alley cat. So far we’ve only lived internationally in France, Portugal, South Africa during our eighteen years of retirement.
“As you can see, we love travel and the last slide we sometimes show in our classes is a statement we believe; a combination of Mark Twain quotes, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness. . . . Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime. ”
Get to know about more of our faculty in the near future.