Gary Morgan stands at the top of Mount Kilimanjaro.
The plains of the Serengeti reminded Gary Morgan, the one-time Olympic race-walker from Clarkston, of maybe Kansas in late summer: flat, wide-open terrain, lots of tans and brown.

But the 45-year-old didn't need Toto to tell him they weren't in Kansas, or Michigan, or any other place he had ever been.

Morgan has been to Australia, Korea and lots more places in his two- plus decades of race-walking on the world circuit. He's been to Olympics, Olympic Trials, World Cups and world masters' games, but he'd never seen -- outside the pages of a magazine or on cable TV -- a lion taking down a zebra right there in front of him. Till now.

He had never been up on a hot-air safari, looking down on the seemingly-tiny and endless hordes of animals on the move in search of water during a searing, long drought. He'd never sat at a resort at the edge of the huge Ngorongoro Crater, up at 7,500 feet watching sunset as Masai farmers herded goats up the slopes inside the rim, not far from a mother and baby rhino.

No, this wasn't Kansas, it was Tanzania. It was also a Kathy Loper Tour.

Back in January, Morgan, who'd had a really rough 2004 -- his dad died in March, he dropped out of the World Cup 50K with a bum hip in May, then he'd hurt his Achilles and had to drop out of the Chicago Marathon in October, forcing a long rehab -- spotted a magazine ad for a Loper Tours trip to the Kilimanjaro Marathon in February.

He had no intention of going on such short notice; he just wanted to talk to organizers and maybe plant the seed for a future trip. Give himself something nice to think about during a stretch of endless winter.

Loper, who now lives in California, has Michigan roots as well. In 1974 she and Jeannie Bocci became the first Michigan women to run the Boston Marathon, and she founded the long-running Paul Bunyan run in Oscoda.

After moving to San Diego, Loper put on and scored races. Then -- with partner Kurt Loder, a veteran of the Asian tour business -- she began offering tours to exotic marathon locales.

When Morgan called Loper and told her he lived in Michigan, she asked him if he knew Bocci or Marty Kraft.

"They got me into race-walking 25 years ago," he replied. Small world. "She started going into her spiel about Africa," said Morgan. "She's quite a salesperson." Apparently. Next thing he knew, he was rattling off his credit-card number and committed to an 18-day trip to Africa, including an optional six-day trek to the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro and back.

"I had other things planned, but I canceled them. I said, 'I'm not getting any younger. If I'm going to do it, do it!'" remembered Morgan. "I've thought about growing up, but I'm in no hurry."

A month later, he and about 35 Loper Tour members were bound for Amsterdam, and then on to Tanzania.

"It's a beautiful place," said Morgan, not knowing where to start in describing highlights. The colorful garb of the local women, boundless hospitality of the natives ... He took in all the sights to fry an eye, fill the memory card and expose film of both his digital and standard cameras.

Loper Tours are known for their packed schedule of highlights, series of banquets, great places to stay and day trips. The first day in-country, in the city of Arusha, Morgan encountered his first strange beings: local Hash House Harriers.

"I'd never done that before, so that was fun," said Morgan of hashing. One of the Harriers owned a local pub, so a fair amount of beer was quaffed later at his joint.

(Morgan, not one to let the moss grow, recounted his trip during a hectic weekend in early April. He had taken a half-day off from his job as a GM plant electrician to drive to Chicago for the Shamrock Shuffle expo. There, as Michigan's incoming Road Runners Clubs of America representative, he wanted to pick brains of others on how to make the RRCA more relevant to state runners. Then he was going to drive home for a Saturday flight to New York for a Long Island 20K Sunday. Whew!)

Gary Morgan gets ready to start the Kilimanjaro Marathon with Mount Kilimanjaro as the backdrop.
In Africa, tour participants had a get-together banquet the first night, then flew by prop plane the next morning to the Serengeti, landing on a grass runway after flying over the Great Rift.

"And away we went on safari," said Morgan. Drought had the animals on the march: hippos, zebras, wildebeests. The second day, another safari. This time, elephants and lions, one of them taking down a zebra, followed by an incongruity you won't find in Kansas, sunset at poolside. The next day, another safari and nature hike. You get the picture.

They arrived in Tanzania Feb. 18. The marathon, half-marathon and 5K were Feb. 27, starting and finishing in the city of Moshi, near the base of Kilimanjaro.

Participants started on a dirt track inside a stadium, went over gently- rolling terrain for 10 miles, then did a relentless 1,200-foot climb over 10 miles as the heat soared to near 100 degrees F.

Morgan finished in 3:39, leading the marathoners in the Loper group. "I was very happy with that," he said. "I hadn't run a marathon in a long time and I hadn't done a lot of training. It told me I was in 3:10 shape. It was a very tough course."

As if a tough marathon in high heat wasn't enough, Morgan and 22 others in the tour then did the optional six-day trek up Kilimanjaro, with porters doing the heavy hauling.

The last day of climbing began at 11 p.m. and finished with sunrise over the crater rim and glacier at 7 a.m. The climb was timed both for the sunrise and because the scree above tree line freezes into an easier-to- navigate surface at night.

"It took a lot out of me, but it was worth it," said Morgan.

What took five days to go up, took only a day to come down.

Then it was back to the real world, of Michigan winter and roadkill in place of a lion kill. Loper tried to talk Morgan into the Great Wall of China tour in May, but he says that will have to wait a year. He has plans he can't cancel later this year, and it's time to get serious about training.

Morgan will be the celebrity announcer at the Fifth Third Bank Solstice Run in Northville June 25, and hopes to walk at both the U.S. championships and the world masters' games in Edmonton.

"Little by little, things are coming back," he said. Proof was the 19- minute 5K he ran at the March 26 Hansons race in Utica.

Overlooked because of his success in race-walking -- Morgan was top U.S. finisher at 37th overall in the 20K race-walk at the Seoul Games in '88 -- is his talent as a runner. He has posted running PRs of 2:35 at the marathon, 33:30 for 10K and 54:10 for 10 miles, to go with walking PRs of 19:55 for 5K, 41:38 for 10K, 1:26:56 for 20K, and 4:13 for 50K.

Meanwhile, his memories of Africa will tide him over until he can get to China. "It was an awesome trip," said Morgan, talking by cell phone while closing in on Chicago. "It was definitely worth the cost. I saw stuff you only see in National Geographic or on TV." MR