A World Away Podcast By cover art

A World Away

A World Away

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Most people who move to the Emerald Coast come here to slow down — to trade the hustle for white sand and blue water. Fletcher's lunch guests on this edition of Out to Lunch did something altogether different. They came here, fell in love with the place, put down roots — and then turned their attention to some of the most remote and demanding terrain on earth. Jim Sumpter is a man who has spent more than 25 years leading people through places most of us will only ever see on a map. He came up through the Army, training and deploying elite recon teams in foreign environments — work that demanded precision, physical toughness, and the ability to keep people alive when things go sideways. When he left the military, Jim didn't exactly dial it back. He went on to earn certification as a Wilderness Instructor through the Professional Association of Wilderness Guides and Instructors, and became a member of the Explorers Club. Jim is also a certified leader in the Duke of Edinburgh International Youth Award program — an honor recognized by HRH Prince Edward himself — for his work mentoring young adults in outdoor leadership. Jim’s partner in all of this — in adventure and in life — is Kristi Sumpter. Kristi is a 500-hour certified Vinyasa yoga instructor, an E-RYT 500, who built her practice right here on the Emerald Coast, starting at Balance Health Studio in Seagrove Beach. She went on to teach nationally at the Wanderlust International Yoga Festival, and has since led yoga on four continents. Her certifications go deep — Yoga Medicine, SUP Yoga, sound healing — and she's the person who figured out that yoga and mountaineering, far from being opposites, are actually a powerful partnership. On every Endeavor expedition, Kristi is there, helping climbers prepare, recover, breathe, and stay grounded — literally and figuratively. Together, Jim and Kristi co-founded Endeavor Expeditions — a Santa Rosa Beach-based company that takes everyday people to the rooftops of the world. Their signature journey is Mount Kilimanjaro, the tallest freestanding mountain on the planet, in Tanzania. But they've also worked across South America, Central America, Patagonia, and beyond — always with military-grade planning, always with a safety-first approach, and always with the belief that the people standing in line at Publix right now are more capable than they realize. And in a beautiful footnote to all of this: when Jim and Kristi learned during the pandemic that the Tanzanian guides and porters who work Kilimanjaro couldn't afford school fees for their kids, they started a nonprofit called Kids of Kilimanjaro. Because that's apparently what explorers do when they're not out exploring. There's a version of life on the Emerald Coast that looks a lot like a postcard — beautiful, sun-drenched, and deliberately uncomplicated. And there's nothing wrong with that. That's part of why people come here. But what Jim and Kristi Sumpter remind us is that this place also attracts a different kind of person — people who are drawn to the water and the light and the pace of life here, but who carry something restless and reaching inside them. People who look at a mountain on the other side of the world and think: I wonder if I could get there, and I wonder who I could take with me. What they've built with Endeavor Expeditions is remarkable not just as a business, but as a philosophy. The idea that preparation, courage, and the right guide can get an ordinary person to the top of Africa — that's not a sales pitch, that's a worldview. And it's one they've tested over and over, on some of the most demanding terrain on earth, with clients who showed up nervous and came home changed. Add to that Kristi's gift for keeping people grounded — physically, mentally, spiritually — and you have something genuinely rare: an expedition company that treats the inner journey as seriously as the outer one. And then there's Kids of Kilimanjaro. Because Jim and Kristi didn't just see a mountain — they saw the people who work it, generation after generation, carrying impossibly heavy loads with grace and joy. And when the world shut down and those families lost their income, the Sumpters didn't look away. They built something. That's the kind of community citizenship that doesn't make the local news, but maybe it should. This is what Out to Lunch is really about — not just the businesses on the Emerald Coast, but the people behind them. The ones who washed ashore here, or grew up here, or simply chose here — and then went out and did something extraordinary. Jim and Kristi Sumpter call Santa Rosa Beach home. And honestly? We're lucky they do. Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Farm & Fire restaurant on Highway 331. Farm & Fire is one of Chef Jim Shirley’s family of fine restaurants. It’s open from 4pm, 6 days a week, and from 11am for brunch on Sundays. You can find photos from this show by Brandan ...
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