marietta - ohio
The Venue
The Ohio Odonata Society formed about 20 years ago as an outgrowth of a 1990-2000 state survey and thus has been in existence in one form or the other for about 30 years. It has an annual meeting (which would coincide with the DSA meeting) which draws from 20-100 individuals. A newly launched website: https://www.ohioodonatasociety.org/ is a great resource. There is a very active (940 member) Facebook group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/odonataohio) and over 4,000 people have contributed to our iNaturalist project: (https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/ohio-dragonfly-survey-ohio-odonata-survey note: we “pull” in all Odonata observations from Ohio, so these 4K people have not all purposely contributed). The group has actively been discussing the meeting for several years and are excited to finally get it on.
Located in Marietta, Ohio, at the confluence of the Muskingum and Ohio rivers, Marietta College is a four-year liberal arts college. Tracing its roots to the Muskingum Academy, which was founded in 1797, the College was officially chartered in 1835. Today, Marietta College serves a body of 1,200 full-time students. The College offers over 40 majors and is consistently ranked among the top regional comprehensive colleges by U.S. News & World Report and The Princeton Review. Marietta was selected seventh in the nation according to the Brookings Institution’s rankings of colleges by their highest value added, regardless of major. We will have the meetings in the McDonough Auditorium with comfortable seating and full A/V services.
transportation
Marietta does not have an airport. It is surrounded by airports, however, with Columbus and Pittsburgh being 2-3 hours away, Cleveland 3 hours away, and Cincinnati about 5 hours away. There are also smaller airports in Dayton, Toledo, Akron-Canton and also in Charleston WV. There is a small airport in Williamstown right across the river with daily service to Charlotte. The lack of a major airport nearby may not be much of an issue given the nature of the pre- and post- trips and the fact that Marietta is about a 5 hour drive from Washington and is within 6 hours of a number of cities as seen on the map to the right. An 8-hour drive brings Chicago, most of Virginia, Maryland and New Jersey into range, as well as NYC. Our term-of-art is that we are “centrally isolated”.
food
Attendees – staying in the dorms or not – may be able to eat in the dining hall on campus for a fixed rate per meal depending on whether there are enough people staying on campus to justify keeping the dining hall open. Tim Horton’s is across the street from the dorms and a McDonalds and Subway a 5-minute walk away. There are MANY restaurants in the area including Asian Fusion, Indian, Chinese, etc. There are also small “hometown” style restaurants and a local brewpub. There are 2 chain Mexican restaurants and one good family owned one. There are chain restaurants of all types. Most of these are within walking distance of the college. We encourage participants to strike out on their own or in small groups to explore at mealtimes although we will try to have some kind of picnic or river cruise dinner for interested parties Saturday night.
The “destination meeting”
This meeting has the added attraction of possibly being a “destination meeting” which would accommodate participants wanting to bring families along. Marietta is a very historic city (David McCullough researched his book “The Pioneers” here (and much of it is set in Marietta) and has 2 larger museums and several restored houses. There is an aquatic center, miles of mountain-bike trails, a skate park, an excellent riverside walking trail, numerous small shops including many antique stores, a great cooking store, a farmers’ market Saturday morning on the edge of campus, historic cemeteries (supposedly more Revolutionary War officers are buried in the vicinity than anywhere else in the country), native American earthworks, kayak and bike rentals, manually operated
locks and dams on the Muskingum River that are approaching 200 years old; a restored steam sternwheeler, a nearby island where Aaron Burr hatched his conspiracy (reachable by sternwheeler), and regular scheduled cruises on a sternwheeler in Marietta, lots of hiking trails, etc. It will overdose a history buff and there is enough to entertain younger kids through teenagers (just kidding, nothing will do that). The Wilds, a 10,000+ acre conservation park with more than 25 species (https://www.thewilds.org/animals) is about 45 minutes away. There’s also a lot of fishing. Much of this is in walking distance of the campus (not so much some of the hotels, although even the ones by the interstate can be reached via the bike/pedestrian trail along the river). There is even a Walmart, and a decent hospital if anyone pushes things a bit too far.