While in Toronto, she began frequenting a local airfield, and soon became fascinated with flying. Following the Armistice in November 1918, she returned to the United States and entered Columbia University as a pre-medical student in the fall of 1919. Earhart soon realized that the practical aspects of medicine did not appeal to her, and left Columbia in 1920 to join her parents in Los Angeles, in an effort to help keep their marriage intact.
In December 1920, she took her first ride in an airplane with pilot Frank Hawks. In January 1921, she began taking flying lessons from Anita ("Neta") Snook. With help from her family, she took a job in a telephone company and bought her first airplane.
In 1922, she set her first aviation record with an unofficial women's altitude record of 14,000 feet under the auspices of the Aero Club of Southern California.
The following March, Earhart appeared as one of the attractions at a local air rodeo and in May 1923 she acquired her airline pilot's license. She was the first woman, and seventeenth pilot, to receive a National Aeronautic Association pilot's license.
Despite Earhart's efforts, her father's alcoholism, combined with her parents' inability to manage money, eventually led to the divorce of Edwin and Amy Earhart in 1924.
Following her parents' divorce, Earhart sold her airplane and bought a Kissel roadster car she called the "Yellow Peril."
In June 1924, she drove cross-country with her mother from Los Angeles to Medford, Massachusetts, in order to move back to where they'd come from and had family, stopping along the way to visit several national parks.
Packing their belongings, mother and daughter drove up the west coast to Washington state, and then on into Canada to visit Banff and Lake Louise. The roads outside of major cities at this time were at best dirt wagon trails for agricultural use, and so road signs were awful as well.
Thanks for some history of Amelia Earhart.
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