I am fascinated by adventure and often looking to create new adventures for myself. While shuffling through old family papers I came across the letters of a reluctant adventurer from my family. Her name was Maddie Abbott and she was just 16 years old when her adventure began. It was 1860 and war was brewing in America. Maddie and her three siblings had lost their...

After our lazy morning on the porch and a late breakfast, we loaded two canoes and two kayaks on the truck. We headed out down the dusty, winding gravel road upstream for a little outing on the river. We parked at a State Park – $2 – and drove down to the lot by the river. There was a building near the river called the Shot Tower. This is an old Civil War...

During our trip out guides taught us a few Swahili words. I don’t think I am going to spell them right but here they are. Jambo – Hello/How are you Pole Pole – slowly, slowly Haraka Haraka – quickly, quickly Chacoola kitam – delicious Maisha Marefu – Long Life – this is their toast Muzungu – White tourist –...

Our journey as a big group has just ended. We are in the parking lot waiving our final goodbyes to our new friends. They will be boarding one of the small planes soon to fly back to Kilimanjaro airport. I wonder if the runway is smoother than these Serengeti roads. We really don’t have much idea of what our adventure today will be. We have a new driven Solomon...

We woke up before the wake up “call” came to knock at our door. We were tired but anxious to get to the balloon ride. It didn’t take us long to repack. After two weeks of packing up your stuff every morning you get to be an expert at getting it done quickly. As we start for the lobby one of the porters shows up to carry our bags. We are the first...

We rise again early for a long drive to the Serengeti. Little do we know that these will be the worst roads yet! Could they really be any worse? The answer to that is definitely YES. Its interesting because I was recently reading an article about the fight over building a super highway through the Serengeti. It was in national geographic. I tried to insert a link...

Breakfast buffet at Tarangerie and there were elephants walking around just outside. We walked out on the deck with our coffee and watched them for a few minutes. How’s that for an amazing start to the day. John was still getting ready so I had breakfast with Suz, Nathan and Jeff. I stopped by the gift shop to pick up some maps. I had tried to bargain with her...

I woke up at 5:30am so I went ahead and took another shower and went down to breakfast. John got up when I got out of the shower and was rushing around thinking he was running late until I told him it was barely 6 and we weren’t leaving until 9. He stayed in the room for a bit and finished organizing his stuff. The dining room was mostly empty except for a...

We woke at 5 am, an hour before wake up. We had gotten a good nights rest thanks to our level of complete exhaustion and the fact that I was still so dehydrated that I didn’t have to get up and pee at all during the night. We were packed and ready just as some of the group were rising. I was ready to get down the mountain to a shower. 7 days of caked on dust...

We have dinner at 5:30 with the final instructions on tonight’s climb. Eric says there will be three groups. We are surprised that he doesn’t assign people to groups rather letting them select for themselves. This leaves us with only Sarah in our group as everyone else selects group B or C. At first we are a little sad at our small group -there are people...