Later he skipped school to follow his naval officer father to Guam from where he travelled to Hawaii, Japan, China, Hong Kong and the Philippines. After returning to the states to complete his high school and college education he joined three separate expeditions in 1931 and 1932. The first was made up of  a team of GWU surveyers sent to verify the US-Canadian border in Maine. He then embarked upon a 2 1/2 month, 5,000-mile Caribbean Motion Picture Expedition with 50 college students, sailing on the schooner Doris Hamlin, one of the last of America's four-masted commercial ships. His third expedition was with the Puerto Rican Mineralogical Expedition on a survey of Puerto Rico. These exploits and other expeditions earned him membership in the renowned Explorers Club, which led to even more expeditions of discovery including the Alaskan Radio Experimental Expedition.

Later, tiring of his teaching job at Michigan Military Academy, he joined the US Cavalry and went west. He was posted at Fort Grant in Arizona with the US 7th Cavalry. The experience of riding patrols sent out to track Apache renegades and meeting real westerners gave the young soldier military experience and appreciation of the culture of the American West. He developed a great respect for the Indian traditions, which is shown in the Apache novels he wrote many years later. This lust for adventure never left him even after "settling down" with a wife and three kids. In 1916 ERB took his family on a rugged 3527-mile cross-country journey by  from Oak Park, Illinois to Los Angeles.

In 1923 LRH's father, a naval officer, was ordered to Washington DC. The family sailed  from SF through the new Panama Canal to New York  on USS Ulysses S. Grant. During the voyage he met a student of Sigmund Freud  - US Navy Commander Joseph "Snake" Thompson  - who introduced him to Freud's theories and encouraged him to pursue a study of the nature of the mind. Commander Thompson, a surgeon, was known throughout the Navy as "Snake" because of his herpetology interests and publications. The Navy sent him to study under Freud. He met a 12-year-old LRH and having no boys of his own, piqued his interest in the mind and many other subjects. Following the voyage he set him down in the Library of Congress and Smithsonian Institute.

In 1928 he took the USS Henderson from San Diego to visit his father who was stationed in Guam. From there he went on to visit many Asian countries: travelling inland through China to Beijing's Forbidden City, Japan, Philippines, and Java. During this time he was influenced by a British intelligence officer, Buddhist priests, and a man descended from magicians in the court of Kublai Khan.

ERB's reading interests leaned to material about the military, especially novels by General Charles King and books on Roman history: Caesar's Commentaries, Macauley's Lays of Ancient Rome and the works of Gibbon. He found excitement in the vigorous style, stirring narrations and martial tone of these authors. Other favourite authors included George Barr McCutcheon (Graustark novels), Anthony Hope (Prisoner of Zenda), Richard Haliburton, Mark Twain, H. M. Stanley, Robert Service, H. H. Knibbs and later, Zane Grey and Jack London.

ERB was a life-long Republican, taking a strong pro-military stance in most situations. He inherited his father's morality, devotion to the military, and belief in capitalism, which his fertile imagination molded into original science fiction, sword and fantasy, and adventure themes so often imitated by other writers in decades to come.

ERB was tremendously influenced by General Charles King, a veteran of all the US military conflicts fought during his lifetime of nine decades. He also was ERB's commandant at Michigan Military Academy for a time and was a best-selling author of military adventures. ERB was almost certainly influenced by Buffalo Bill Cody, Carl Hagenbeck's Wild Animal Exhibit, and Nikola Tesla at the Chicago Columbian Exposition of 1893. Accounts of Africa by explorers such as Henry M. Stanley were also a major influence in his formative years.

ERB returned to a position of assistant commandant and instructor of geology, gatling gun use, riding and drill at the Michigan Military Academy. A few years later he did well in the business world as a the head of the Secretarial Department of the Sears and Roebuck, Co. in Chicago. All of these influences played a major role in preparing him for a writing career which he began in 1911 at age 36.

After returning to Chicago and Oak Park, Ed had numerous poems published in local papers under the penname Normal Bean. During The Great War he wrote numerous patriotic articles for magazines and newspapers. The Burroughs archive contains a wealth of personal journals, books of newspaper clippings, and carbon copies from decades of correspondence. ERB's first "serious" writing was done in 1903 but was not published until a century later: Minidoka 937th Earl of One Mile Series M: An Historical Fairy Tale.   Ed wrote numerous movie treatments and plays . . . the most notable being the one he wrote for his actress daughter, Joan: You Lucky Girl! Joan and her husband, James Pierce, eventually starred as Jane and Tarzan in the 1932 radio series, Tarzan of the Apes. All this early journalistic writing served him well many years later when he flew and sailed across Pacificana as the oldest accredited war correspondent in World War II.

He also had musical talent and wrote and often performed ballads for live audiences and on radio stations such as WOL. In the '80s he wrote the words and music for the Mission Earth soundtrack that was performed by Edgar Winter.

ERB bought and ran a stationery/camera shop in Idaho in his younger days. The Burroughs Tarzana archives are brimming with photographs and movies from his early days in Idaho, Chicago, Oak Park and Tarzana. His interest in photography was passed on to his two sons who became expert photographers -- Hulbert served as a combat photographer in WWII and Jack used photography extensively in his art projects.

In 1931 LRH took up glider flying and joined a pilot friend to barnstorm across the Mid-West. The first magazine article he sold was "Tailwind Willies" to the aviation journal, Sportsman Pilot

In the mid-1930s he earned his pilot licence and for a time was quite dedicated to the hobby - even purchasing his own aircraft. One time he flew over the mountains to Colorado to see his daughter Joan 's acting performance with a stock company. His enthusiasm cooled somewhat after his rookie-pilot son Hulbert crashed their brand new aircraft -- narrowly escaping serious injury. Not long after this he also learned that his flying instructor had died in an aircraft accident at an aeronatical exhibition.

ERB's writing was of a highly imaginative nature, but upon close observation, many of his stories were also strongly influenced by his experiences as a cowboy, miner, cavalry man, policeman, stationery/camera store shopkeeper, rancher, traveller, multi-media businessman, Hollywood producer, WWII journalist, etc.