Irene Kasson is full of stories — 89 years of stories to be exact.

There was her whirlwind hitchhiking trip through Europe, and the time she sneaked into her 25-cent-per-night hostel after dark through the window of the men's dorm room, and she can't forget her visit to the Madonna in the Soviet Union in the 1970s.

She has notebooks for every place she's been to remind her if she forgets.

"I could talk for hours," she says of her traveling tales, which are often a topic of some interest among family and friends.

Kasson, a Bellingham resident, has spent years upon years of her life exploring unfamiliar climes. Her daughter was born in Trinidad, where Kasson lived with her husband while he did construction on the Caribbean island in the early 1950s. From there they traveled farther, on to Bombay, India, where her husband worked as an engineer.

"That was nice," she says of her two years in Bombay, where she had her own cadre of staff that became like family. "I quite enjoyed it."

And she learned quite a bit in that two years about how privileged life in Northern America could be.

"I don't criticize as much anymore," she says of how India changed her. "I saw so many different kinds of people and I saw so much poverty in India. You try and help as many people as you can and be nice to them and they'll be nice back." In 1974, Kasson's husband died, but she didn't let it stop her from seeing the world.

"Since my husband is gone, I've been doing a lot of traveling," she says. "I have a lot of trust and patience. I go off sometimes without a lot of planning, and it always works out nicely."

Shortly after her husband's death, Kasson joined with a group called Servas, which was dedicated to fostering peace and understanding through travel. Kasson met the nonprofit's founder, late Bellingham resident Bob Luitweiler, while she was helping to build a youth hostel in Birch Bay.

"I spent 20 years traveling with Servas and it was wonderful," she says. "There's so much to this world."

Through Servas, she was able to stay with families in other countries and really feel like she was at home wherever she went. And when people wanted to visit the Northwest, she opened her doors and returned the favor.

"You become part of the family," she says of her more intimate travels through Servas. "You're not a traveler; you're someone who wants to get to know people."

Though she now has a walker, Kasson hasn't let her age slow down her pace as she careens around the world. In the past five years alone, Kasson has gone to Hawaii, Brazil, China, England and Japan.

"You never know what's going to happen when you travel by yourself," she says. "I always tell my friends to just get up and go."

She knows once her friends and family take that first step, there will be no going back.

"I think it's really opened my eyes to more things that you can do and you can see and you can be," she says. "You meet so many different people and you lose all your fear of somebody different."