Dan Rather’s Hair-Raising Travel Tales

Dan Rather (Photo: Gail Oskin/WireImage)

From eating eyeballs to surviving airplane crash landings, veteran journalist Dan Rather tells some of the most remarkable traveler’s tales you’re ever likely to hear. There’s the former military pilot to whom he owes his life, nicknamed “Deadstick Dave.” And you would never guess what he considers to be the essential items to take on every trip.

M.S. Saint Laurent (Photo: Great Lake Cruising)

The longtime former CBS Evening News anchor has been traveling professionally since 1956: covering war zones, accompanying U.S. presidents at historic moments, and sometimes just going fishing. Rather was the featured speaker on a June sailing of the coastal cruise ship, M.S. Saint Laurent, between Montreal, Canada, and Portland, ME.

Related: River Cruising: Everything You Need to Know

Coincidentally, the vessel made news on June 18 after colliding with a lock in upstate New York, causing the evacuation of passengers and blocking the St. Lawrence Seaway for 42 hours. But I sat down with Rather a little more than a week earlier in the ship’s lounge, as we sailed, uneventfully, along the St. Lawrence river.

“When I was 22 years old, I had only been out of Texas once, and never out if the country,” recalls the Lone Star State native, now 83. “I joined the Marines at 21 and went for training to California. I had one of the shortest and least distinguished careers in the Marines ever,” he chuckles.

His traveling started modestly, when he began supplementing his news journalism by calling play-by-play sports, which sometimes took him out of state. “But when I came to CBS in 1962, that was when my travel really started. I was only home 31 days out of the year, following Dr. [Martin Luther] King [Jr.], covering the civil rights movement, and going to places like Central America.”

A Beaver pontoon plane (Photo: compdude787/Flickr)

That year was the first of two close-calls he’s had in small airplanes. “I had a forced landing in a single-engine airplane, on a trip from Dallas to Fort Worth,” he remembers. “This was a small charter, single-engine Piper Cub kind of plane. We had engine trouble and the pilot put it down in an open field.”

The second experience was even scarier. It was in 1999, when he was on a fly-fishing trip with his brother in Alaska. “We were flying in a Beaver, which is a popular pontoon plane, in a remote section of southwest Alaska, and the engine blew a gasket,” Rather recalls. “The pilot, who we nicknamed ‘Deadstick Dave,’ fortunately for us had something like 29,000 hours as a military pilot. He was an older man, and he quickly picked a lake to set it down in. But as he circled this lake once, there was a big stump in the middle of it. He had already picked out a second, smaller lake. But the second lake was not really big enough to put the plane down. So he made an emergency — I would call controlled crash landing in the second lake.

Related: Learning How to Survive a Plane Crash

“Saved us all, and saved most of the airplane,” continues Dan. “On my own time, that was the most hair-raising [adventure],” he says, before adding with a grin: “What I would call the ‘pucker factor’ was pretty high.”

Dan Rather in Vietnam in 1966. ( Photo: Associated Press)

And while his culinary adventures haven’t been as life-threatening, they certainly make great stories. There was the time he ate a banquet with the Saudi royal family, and his host “had a hooded falcon on his shoulder for the whole meal.” And then there’s this: “During the Vietnam war, we were served goat eyes by the people in the mountains on the Cambodian/Vietnamese border,” he says. “We kidded ourselves that they were like oysters. Frankly, it was like swallowing a marble.” Fortunately, Rather says, “I can eat just about anything.”

Rather may be adventurous when it comes to food, but not everyone around him was. Like a certain Commander-in-Chief, who was once served something he considered inedible during a pivotal moment in American diplomacy. “President Nixon did not have a cast iron stomach,” Rather recalls. “He was a little particular.

Richard Nixon flashes victory sign from Helicopter as he leaves White House for the last time ( Photo: Associated Press)

“On President Nixon’s trip to China in 1972, they served a dish. It was a very small fish, like a white fish or a minnow, and [served] in the Chinese equivalent of Champagne, some kind of sparkling thing. They put the live fish in, and the drink overwhelmed the fish and it would flop over on its side, and you were supposed to pluck it out and eat it. It was described to us as an ancient Chinese delicacy, and it was pretty good, to tell you the truth.” President Nixon, however, was not convinced. “I remember [Chinese premiere and Chairman Mao’s right-hand man] Zhou Enlai was trying to get him to try the dish. But he didn’t eat it.”

Which brings us to Rather’s must-have essentials for any place he travels in the world. “If I could only pack two things, they would be clean socks and peanut butter,” he said. “They are the absolute base minimum.” But not just any peanut butter. “I prefer it in a tube, by the way, because it’s easier to pack. And I prefer it crunchy, as opposed to plain peanut butter. And it’s harder and harder to find in a tube. But I find it’s the all-purpose food.” When the alternative is goat eyeballs, it might be hard to disagree.

Related: Favorite Food Moments on Every Continent

WATCH: Zebra, Crocodile, and Antelope, Oh My! You Won’t Believe What’s on This Restaurant’s Menu

Let Yahoo Travel inspire you every day. Hang out with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. Watch Yahoo Travel’s original series “A Broad Abroad.”

Learn more about our travel policy.