Adventure is about more than just swashbuckling pirates and cave exploring archeologists. Sometimes reality can be  just as adventurous as the larger than life heroes in fictional adventure books.

There are many books out there that detail the real life and adventures of explorers that helped to map the globe and discover the many places that we take for granted. While traveling across the United States may be a piece of cake now with all of our interstates and highways, but before there were roads there was only forests.

There were no gas stations to get food when you were hungry or premade homes with there forced air heaters to keep you warm and toasty. People like Lewis and Clark braved the wilds of America for the sake of exploration Settlers like the Donner Party died of starvation and resorted to cannibalism in order to survive.

There was a time when American was a wild land filled with danger and peril. Many of these people wrote down their journey and those notes and manuscripts have been turned into books describing their exploits. Many people died trying to climb Mt. Everest and exploring the North and South Poles. There journeys were filled with disease, hunger and enemies.

Some were monsters that killed entire civilizations and captured the native people for slavery. They killed in the name of gold and God. Sometimes reality is more terrifying than the fiction people can dream up.