Jennifer Cleland is the sole proprietor of a business offering enjoyable and informative tours of the Finger Lakes. She will assist you in designing an itinerary for your guided visit to sites of historical and natural interest in the Finger Lakes region of New York State, or join your group as a step-on guide.
Jennifer spent her childhood in western Pennsylvania, and lived with her family in Europe for six years as a teenager. The family had traveled extensively in North America, from Nova Scotia to Acapulco, and in Europe toured from Scandinavia to Yugoslavia. She entered Cornell University as a freshman in 1968, and took a leave of absence after three years to become a founding member of the Highwoods Stringband. The group toured on three continents, was nominated for a Grammy Award for an album recorded at Carnegie Hall, and was included in the Smithsonian Institution’s compilation Folk Song America: a Twentieth Century Revival. Jenny has played Irish music since the 1980's, and is available to play celtic harp for events and gatherings.
Cleland returned to Ithaca, where she currently lives with her husband Bob Stundtner, in the 1990's, and received a Ph.D. from Cornell University for her dissertation Cajun Carnival: American Myths and Radical Roots in 1999. She served as president of the Finger Lakes Grassroots Festival of Music and Dance, now a nationally recognized event, for its first seven years, and enjoys leading tours locally as a docent at the Museum of the Earth and the Cornell Plantations.
Jennifer fell in love with the Finger Lakes at first sight 40 years ago, and her fascination with the area has only grown with time. She enjoys sharing the stories that she continues to discover about central New York, from the Native American culture that has thrived here for a millennium to the utopian social reformers and empire builders of the nineteenth century, and making connections between the unique landscape and the social history of the people who have lived here. The Finger Lakes region remains a place where people reinvent themselves and their world – allow us to broaden your experience beyond its natural beauty and first-class food and wine to see how the area helped to shape our area and the world.