Greatest Adventure of All Time

[Oldbob]

My timing is good.  I guess it's my turn to break in a new discussion topic.  I've had a few adventures over the years.  I'll share them later.

My question,

What do you consider the greatest adventure of all time?

Shackleton and the South Pole?  Sir Edmund Hillary and Everest?  Magellan and his voyage around the world?  Marco Polo and his journeys to the Orient?  Livingston and Africa?  The Mega-transect of Africa completed less than a decade ago?  Neil Armstrong on the moon? Lewis and Clark and the journey across America?   

[MotherEarth]

History channel again...saw an adventure that Teddy Roosevelt did with his son in the
Amazon Basin...I think to discover whether the River of Doubt was a tributary of the
Amazon River, which it was proved to be.  Teddy suffered from over doing his physical
limits and the son almost drowned due to impatience with rapids and tried to "ride" them
in a craft that sat about 6 inches out of the water.

Wills and Burke in Australia is another adventure that was grueling. A movie about this
(oldie) is available.

[Maximus]

Teddy Roosevelt is a classic adventurer, and as you all know, some of his quotes about taking chances and living life to the fullest are priceless.  He led quite an interesting life, but I have to confess, I had never heard of the Amazon expedition.  I'm going to have to get my hands on a copy of that History Channel Special.

Before answering the question, I have to wonder how we are defining 'greatest?'  If it's by what's accomplished, perhaps Magellan's circumnavigation of the earth is the most remarkable, at least in my mind. 

If it's measured by the suffering endured by the survivors, nothing can compare to the poor souls in the non-fiction book 'Skeletons of the Zahara.'  A sea captain and his crew survived a shipwreck off the desolate western coast of Africa, only to be taken captive by the local tribesman.  Many died of starvation, severe beatings, unimaginable dehydration, or overexposure.  Their captors were cruel, to say the least.  A lucky few managed to eventually make their way to the British consulate in Morocco.  If I remember correctly, the captain, who originally weighed 190 pounds, weighed somewhere in the range of 90-odd pounds when his terrible journey ended.  I highly recommend the book to anyone.  It's disturbing, but also completely captivating. 

[Runner]

This wouldn't qualify as the greatest adventure of all time by any measure, but I have a thing for obscure endurance contests.  A 20 yr. old Cherokee farmer from Oklahoma won the first official footrace across America in 1928.  Many think of endurance racing as a more modern concept.  This is far from the case.  This 20 yr. old had run track in high school, but had no experience with long distances.  He simply thought he could do it.  And he did.  To me, as a runner, that's simply amazing.

[Givens]

Shackleton's adventure is hard to beat for defying the odds and overcoming great hardship.     

Let's not forget about the Viking explorers.  Leif Erikson (sp?) was the first Caucasian to set foot in America, long before Columbus.  The fact that he could get there in a longboat is incredible.  Those ships were not big and the North Atlantic is a treacherous place.

[FPENA98]

I'm partial to Lewis & Clark probably because I've just seen an exhibition at the Smithsonian of many of the artifacts of the expedition including many personal artifacts of Lewis & Clark like their journals of the expedition.  Given the importance of the Core of Discovery to our national identity this adventure has to rank as one of America's greatest adventures.  There's a wonderful PBS documentary in the series "The American Experience" that does an wonderful job of telling the story of the expedition and of its two most important explorers, Lewis & Clark. 

[DR]

I do love the story of Lewis and Clark.  The thought of exploring America and making it from one coast to the other, and then back again, is something that makes me a bit envious, I must confess.  Their adventure was incredibly successful, and I'm certain that as they grew older, they looked back on their lives and were satisfied with what they had accomplished.  To see America as they did would be a dream come true. 

I am also partial to the "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" adventure in Africa.  Not only did he have great adventures, but he was a great man as well.  The soft spoken Scottish missionary actually made an effort to learn the languages of the people he travelled among, and furthermore, he was vehemently against the slave trade.  His life was cut short in Africa, but it was a truly beautiful life.  It's hard to imagine the wonder he must have felt when he first spied Victoria Falls.

[DanM]

My vote here is simply with the Polynesians.  I have no idea, and neither does anyone else, really, how they managed to find certain isolated islands.  How in the world did they manage to cross thousands of miles of open ocean in outrigger canoes?  How in the world did they get to Hawaii?  We don't know their stories, but I think they deserve a vote anyway.  As someone who's spent a big of time on the open ocean, I simply can't fathom the courage it must have taken to travel the open seas in an outrigger canoe.  Of course, this also brings to mind the adventures of Thor on the Kon Tiki, but that is another story in and of itself.