TRAVELIN' GAL: Judy Pearson sits at the wheel of the motor home she will live in for a year during a trip around the border of the United States.

July 22, 2000

Bennet Teacher embarking on yearlong trip along U.S. borders

Pearson plans to relay history lessons back to Fort Collins

By JULIE BAXTER
The Coloradoan

Judy Pearson has condensed her life.

Once the occupant of a four-bedroom, split-level home, Pearson has compressed the essentials of living into a 16-foot long, Tiger pro Van motor home.

The RV's closet doesn't hold much--a handfull of shirts, a couple skirts, a few pairs of shorts, some pants and three pairs of shoes. But Pearson has never been a clotheshorse, and the adventure she's about to embark on outweighs the inconvenience of doing laundry on the road.

"There isn't much room for anything in here. ... My world got so small," said Pearson, a first-grade teacher at Bennett Elementary School.

The motor home will be Pearson's world for the next year as she travels the country seeing all the borders of the United States. Her travels first will take her to North Dakota then east along the coast, then south and finally to the West Coast.

Among other belongings she packed into the motor home is a list of all the history and geography standards for students in kindergarten through 12th grade. Pearson plans to hit as many locations and cover as many lessons as she can while she roams the roads.

What she finds at those locations will go on her Web page and be available for PSD students and teachers to access any time. She'll be something like a living, breathing history lesson on wheels, and students in Fort Collins will benefit from the journey, Bennett Principal Sue Reid said.

"I think it's very rich for kids to be able ... to know someone they're interacting with to have that feedback on places they're probably not going to visit for a while," Reid said. The lessons Pearson will teach from the road go beyond the curriculum. Pearson hopes she'll serve as a role model for girls.

"All of this, I'm hoping, is an inspiration to girls--to show them they can do things on their own," she said.

This isn't Pearson's first solo trip abroad. She saw New Zealand and Australia in 1990, Europe in 1994 and Alaska from a pickup camper in 1996.

But this particular trip has been 12 years in the making, inspired by "Blue Highway" author William Least Heat Moon's travels across the country and John Steinbeck before him.

Like them, she plans to write a book about her travels. She's also writing a book about the New Zealand trip but hasn't found time to finish it.

"My son tells me, travel now and write when you can't travel any more," Pearson said. "I don't know how much writing I'll get done when I'm 92."