A Sense of Summer Adventure

Jim Stimson never owned or wanted to own a boat. But while attending his 40th class reunion last summer, he and two friends, Bruce Smith and Tom Toye, came up with a plan to boat down the Mississippi River. Stimson said, "I mentioned to Bruce Smith that I've always wanted to do this, and he said, 'I have, too.' In fact, he said, 'My mother and stepfather actually went from St. Paul to New Orleans many years ago and I've wanted always to do it, too.'" So the three men, all in their late 50s, bought a 26-foot motorboat that they would guide down the Mississippi, traveling from St. Paul, Minn. to St. Louis, Mo. Puttering along at about five knots an hour, they expected to reach St. Louis in about two weeks, where they would sell the boat. But the recent flooding along the Mississippi put a stop to the trip. About a week after he left on his journey Stimson contacted Weekend Edition to say they had made it to Dubuque, Iowa — a little less than halfway — before the U.S. Coast Guard closed the river.

Michael Merriman spent the last year restoring and renovating his 1958 Flying Cloud Airstream trailer. This summer, he drove the trailer up from his home in Napa, Calif., to Bozeman, Mont., for the 51st Annual International Airstream Rally. Said Merriman, "Since it was the 50th birthday of the trailer and 51st annual rally, I figured this was an ideal spot to bring it to celebrate." Merriman's 22-foot trailer falls into the vintage category, and while he came to the rally alone, he met up with a large group of vintage trailer enthusiasts. He spoke to Weekend Edition from the Stadium Club at Montana State University where he said he was "looking out over a sea of aluminum" – about 845 trailers came to this year's rally. Merriman plans to stay in Bozeman until the rally ends on July 4, which is the birthday of Wally Byam, Airstream's founder. Then it's back to Napa via Seattle and Portland, Ore.

As a little girl, Sarah McLester heard repeated threats from her father about how he was going to run away to Outer Mongolia. Rather than upset her, the idea piqued her interest. And now, she and her husband, Donald, are on an 18-day trip from one end of Mongolia to the other. They started in the Mongolian capital of Ulan Bator, then made their way to the Gobi Desert to ride camels. They visited the Flaming Cliffs, where some of the first dinosaur fossils were found, and drove through the center of Mongolia, all the way to the Siberian border. But McLester's favorite part about the trip has been the people. As she put it, "I just can't say enough about how inspiring these people are."

Annelise Kelly's summer adventure took her to the island of Martinique in the French Antilles. She's cooking for a group of archeology students, who are there to excavate the grounds of an old plantation. She often prepares local cuisine, like poulet colombo, which is a chicken curry in a Creole fashion. But she sometimes cooks up a little bit of French food or American food, just to add a bit of variety. While she's responsible for all the shopping and for preparing all the meals, she definitely has some time for herself — to visit the bakeries for delicious croissants and to eat homemade "sorbet coco" on the beaches.

Nancy Etchemendy of Menlo Park, Calif., will have traveled all the way around the world by the end of the summer. Her adventures began in June, aboard the National Science Foundation's icebreaker, Nathaniel B. Palmer. She joined a group of oceanographers, who are studying the icebergs that have broken off of a large ice shelf. The scientists have been trying to substantiate the theory that icebergs are fertilizing the oceans and sequestering some carbon. But that was only the beginning of her summer travels. After spending most of July back at her home in the U.S., Etchemendy headed to Russia with her husband for a trip on the Trans-Siberian Railroad. They'll catch the train in Moscow and, over the next two weeks, ride it all the way across Russia to Vladivostok.