One thing Cora Ashcraft has learned while traveling and moving to various places, she says is it is not worth having something if you can’t appreciate it.

Ashcraft was born and raised in Norwich, and as a teenager, she already had the inclination to travel and leave her hometown in hopes she would find something else out there that would suit her better.

In middle school, Cora began Tae Kwon Do, and by the time she graduated high school, she was a black belt. Cora played a lot of sports and spent a lot of time doing recreational activities.

After graduating in 2001, she attended college at SUNY Canton. She didn’t find what she was looking for there and decided to come back home and figure out what she wanted to pursue next.

After years of enjoying outdoor activities, such as horse back riding, hiking and others, Cora decided to attend North County Community College and study wilderness recreation. She worked near Syracuse in a daycare facility, and she decided working with children was what she wanted to focus on.

Over time, Cora moved to Saranac Lake, where she worked and learned how to play polo. After about a year and a half, Cora decided to come home and take a breather before getting out her traveling boots again.

Cora’s next traveling venture took her to Eugene, Oregon.

“It was a hard decision to leave my family, but I knew I had to get away for awhile, needed a change and wanted to live somewhere where I could really concentrate on what I wanted to do,” Cora said.

Alongside her traveling companion Boo, her boxer-lab puppy, Cora drove almost clear across the country, in hopes of finding what she was looking for. Once she arrived in Eugene, Cora says she lived at a horse ranch, hiked, played polo, ate great, organically-grown food, saw theater and live musical performances and found a love for sport bikes. Cora said she has always had a love for motorcycles, and while in Eugene, she got her motorcycle license.