Environment – i am sarah kohl

The Ringing Rocks of Pennsylvania

ringing rocks campground Pennsylvania

It’s important to try and get your outdoor activities in before winter when you live someplace like New York. Naturally, this means camping in the beginning of fall! My youngest sister had pointed out that just outside Philadelphia there was a cool phenomenon known as The Ringing Rocks. In typical Kohl-sister fashion, we decided that planning a last minute trip over the weekend was do-able so we packed our things and headed out for the keystone state.

We decided to tent camp at a campground called, The Ringing Rocks Campground, mostly because it was close to our destination. [More]

Panama Rocks in Chautauqua, NY

I had seen this place on the map a few times and thought about visiting, but it was always too close for a real trip and too far for a day trip. That horrible middle ground made it an unattractive destination to me despite the beautiful photos I’d seen.

That’s another thing with visiting natural attractions like Panama Rocks. If you see too many photos of the destination you start to convince yourself that you’ve seen the best parts and there’s no need to go. Or at least I do. So when I got to Panama Rocks I was pleasantly surprised. [More]

Don’t Mess With Texas

If you’ve seen the most recent episode of South Park then you understand how easily you can be sidetracked while trying to look for something online. Well today went something like that for me, or maybe I just have Texas on my mind from looping “Ohio” by Bowling for Soup recently…anyway, today I learned where the phrase, “don’t mess with Texas,” comes from and I thought I would share because it’s actually kind of funny.

I have always thought most of the phrases about Texas, like, “everything’s bigger in Texas,” were annoying and displayed an exaggerated sense of self-importance. [More]

That’s Not a Ladybug!

Around this time of year I hear everyone telling me how they have “ladybugs” trying to get into their house. After a few years of this I started to sound like a broken record. “Those aren’t ladybugs,” is generally as far as I’ll go now.

The truth is they are technically a ladybug, but they differ from our general understanding of ladybugs. They are affectionately known as Asain Beetles and while they do some of the same tasks as other ladybugs (pest control most notably) they have no known preditors and some nasty manners. [More]

The Eternal Flame of Orchard Park

Not far outside of Buffalo, NY is a place called Orchard Park. I often say that I’ve lived in this state my whole life and continue to find new things. This is exactly one of those times. Orchard Park is about an hour from where I grew up and this weekend I discovered a beautiful bit of nature with my family on a hike.

The sight is called the eternal flame and it’s pretty magical to see in person. The hike is a bit difficult and requires a trek through some mud, across some shale, and over a lot of fallen trees. [More]

We Love Rochester NY

I recently gave a quote for the site We Love Rochester NY and I thought if it wasn’t clear yet, I should state. I do love Rochester, NY. If you’re too lazy to read through that blog let me summarize the awesomeness of this city.

The People

The people are amazing. There are a lot of young people here for college which means there is a whole lot of educated young people. Who doesn’t love to be surrounded by that? And what makes it really great is the schools here are all fairly different. For instance you have U of R which tends to bring in a good number of ivy league contenders from wealthy backgrounds. [More]

The Best Way to Eat a Wild Puffball Mushroom

OK so this weekend I picked, cooked, and ate a wild puffball mushroom. I tried to cook it up a whole bunch of different ways because I’ll be honest, I’d never cooked one of these before. After lots of internet research and dirty dishes I came up with a few ways to try cooking it up.

Stir-fry with Coconut Oil – I’m not a huge mushroom eater so I wanted to start out with something that I figured had a low chance of being disgusting. I’ve been addicted to coconut oil the past few days and I’m a firm believer that if you add enough onion to something it will taste just fine. [More]

The First Day of Fall

I love fall. You might think my favorite season is summer with all of the outdoor activities I enjoy, but you’d be wrong. Fall is a wonderful time of year. Most birds have flown south, worker bees are going to be homeless soon, and everything in general is dying. Happy right?

It’s the end of a lot of happy things, and that’s okay. It’s knowing that things will come to an end that makes us appreciative of them in the first place. After all do you think people who live in southern California rave about seeing the sun out when they wake up? [More]

Why GMO’s are Good, Safe, and Delicious

Over the years there has been a lot of debate about what is healthy and what we should be eating. Now more than ever, we have access to this information making us responsive consumers. However, it’s possible that with an increased access to information, we focus on teaching people how to navigate content more than we teach them how to qualify it. Either way, some innocent bystanders got dragged into the issue of “healthy food,” and among them are GMOs.

If you’re unfamiliar, GMO’s are organisms, in this case crops, which have been modified by genetic engineering techniques. [More]

Interesting Article: Empathetic Rats

I highly recommend you read the full article for this. It is fascinating that these rats would be able to understand the pain of their friends and help them. I think the truly amazing part of the study is that when made to choose between setting their friend free and sharing food, eating the food and then freeing their friend, or eating the food and not freeing their friend, more than half the rats shared the food with their buddy! I always knew rats were smart, but I didn’t think of them as empathetic until now.

Read full article here

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