In honor of National Travel and Tourism Week, we’re rolling out the red carpet—not just for you, dear traveler, but for our delightfully over-the-top cast of AI-generated tourism personalities.
In honor of National Travel and Tourism Week, we’re rolling out the red carpet—not just for you, dear traveler, but for our delightfully over-the-top cast of AI-generated tourism personalities. Think of them as the digital dream team of Cortland County wanderers: a cheeky celebration of travel tropes, curated with local flair and just the right amount of sass. From the iced coffee-fueled Content Creator to the patio-loving Bookish Botanist, these fictional folks may be made of pixels, but their travel styles are all too real. So without further ado… meet the crew.
Meet Michelle Enright — Experience Cortland's Executive Director, iced coffee connoisseur, website wrangler, and the quietly brilliant brain keeping Experience Cortland running like a small-town tourism dream (with a healthy dose of controlled chaos). She’s the creative engine behind the branding, the design, the posters, and the plans.
Off the clock (or pretending to be), Michelle’s out living the Cortland dream: sipping Coffee Mania, exploring with her pup, stockpiling dill cheese curds like treasure, and snapping up handmade macramé from M Gaurden on James (her office decor game is elite). Her happy place? Somewhere between the perfect font and a sandwich from The Truxton Outpost.
A champion of small biz, spreadsheet savant, and creative powerhouse, Michelle doesn’t just talk the talk — she types it, designs it, promotes it, and snacks on it. She’s part boss, part brand guardian, and all heart for Cortland.
Meet Candace Rozansky — the caffeinated compass guiding you through Cortland County’s sweetest spots and strangest secrets. As the content creator behind both Experience Cortland and Cortland Curiosities, she blends travel charm with a taste for the uncanny. Whether she’s piecing together forgotten folklore or plotting the perfect picnic route, Candace is fueled by lavender iced coffee and an unshakable instinct for adventure. She’s part history hunter, part itinerary architect, and fully committed to helping you uncover every gem — ghostly or otherwise — tucked into these rolling hills.
By day, she crafts dreamy itineraries filled with farm stops, forest hikes, festivals, and flavor-packed bites. By night (and often by accident), she uncovers forgotten folklore, suspicious gravestones, and roads less traveled — sometimes with Skelly riding shotgun. She’s a blog-writing, calendar-keeping, weird-history-researching machine on a mission to make sure your next Cortland County adventure is equal parts delightful and just a little haunted. If it’s quirky, cozy, or questionably cursed, Candace probably found it first — and already wrote about it.
Meet Farm Foodie — Cortland County’s resident champion of fresh veggies, picnic naps, and “accidentally spending all their money at the farmers market.” Sporting their favorite overalls and sandals (because airflow matters), Farm Foodie can sniff out a local tomato from three towns away and can — and will — give you a 20-minute TED Talk about why pickles are an elite food group.
When they’re not proudly hauling baskets of heirloom radishes and artisanal cheese like a contestant on a very wholesome game show, you’ll find them mapping out their next slow-food adventure. Trinity Valley cheese? Essential. Food & Ferments pickles? Non-negotiable. Freetown Food Forest veggies? Basically therapy.
Sure, they might spend 20 minutes debating the merits of heirloom vs. hybrid tomatoes, but Farm Foodie’s mission is simple: eat local, love local, and make "snack breaks" a full-blown lifestyle. Always hungry for the next roadside stand, Farm Foodie is proof that living slow can be seriously delicious.
Just be warned: hang around them long enough and you might wake up signed up for a CSA and carrying a suspicious number of turnips.
Meet the Curious Traveler — Cortland County’s offbeat adventurer with a taste for the strange, the spooky, and the slightly suspicious. They're not just here for the views (though those rolling hills are pretty dreamy); they’re on a self-guided mission through Cortland Curiosities, chasing ghost stories, cryptid clues, and the kind of history that never made it into textbooks.
By day, they wander dark forest trails and roadside oddities, Skelly the skeleton mascot dangling from their pack. By night? They’re bunking at the notoriously haunted Glen Haven Hotel, swapping ghost stories with the locals and listening for whispers from the other side.
This isn’t your average summer vacationer. This is someone who packs EMF detectors next to bug spray, rocks their Cortland Curiosities swag with pride, and always keeps an eye out for the elusive Truxton Beast. Because in Cortland County, history isn’t just learned — it’s felt. Sometimes right behind you.
Meet the Powder Hound — Cortland County’s ultimate snow-day superstar, always first on the lift and last out of the hot tub. Armed with multiple season ski passes, this slope-shredding legend hops from Greek Peak to Labrador Mountain to Song Mount with the finesse of a caffeinated yeti. One day it's snowboarding down black diamonds, the next it's snowshoeing scenic trails or cross-country cruising like it’s the Nordic Olympics.
They live for Greek Peak’s Hot Dogs & Hot Tubs events — because nothing says “après-ski” like a steamy soak, a foot log, and a mug of cocoa with exactly three marshmallows (any more is excessive, they says). If John McClane from Die Hard had traded Nakatomi Plaza for the snowy hills of Cortland County, he’d be this guy. Yippee-ki-yay, snow lovers.
Meet the Hipster Hiker —Cortland County’s flannel-clad explorer of all things scenic, sudsy, and slightly muddy. Natural habitat? Lime Hollow Nature Center—ideally with crunchy leaves underfoot and their four-legged copilot leading the way. Never seen without their camera, a reusable water bottle, and a deep respect for Leave No Trace (they'll pack out your trash and judge you for littering).
They know every twist of the Finger Lakes Trail and every dog-friendly burger spot worth its brioche bun. Cortland Beer Co., The Box or Homer Hops? Trick question—they’re hitting them all, preferably post-hike, muddy boots and all.
Hiker hunger is real, but so is their commitment to keeping Cortland’s wild spaces wild. If it’s got a good view and better IPA, Hipster Hiker is already there—probably taking a perfectly lit photo while their dog poses like a pro.
Meet the Bookish Botanist —Cortland County's patron saint of patio lounging, cocktail sipping, and perfectly potted plants.
A horticultural hedonist with a book in one hand, a cocktail in the other, and enough vintage tchotchkes to open a shop—they’ve mapped out every Cortland County patio that pairs a killer drink menu with a sun-soaked reading spot.
Their TBR pile from All My Friends Books could crush a small child, and yes—they will judge your bookshelf. Whether flying solo or rolling deep with fellow paperbacks-and-punch people, they’re the life of the garden party.
You’ll spot them knotting macramé at M. Gardens like it’s an Olympic sport, or thrifting their way through The Second Knob with caffeinated determination. Catch them mid-marg, mid-novel, or mid-eye-roll if you dare dog-ear a borrowed book. Pro tip: follow the book tote—it always leads somewhere fabulous.