Mark Easton, R.J. Seifert and Gregg Seifert in Denver, 1996.

By JASON NEBEL
The Cincinnati Enquirer

One of the most popular features of the revamped Travel section, launched in February 1998, has been readers' postcards, a mainstay of the Postings section.

We have received postcards from five continents, almost every major European city and distant islands. Cincinnatians go everywhere!

Many are traveling on business and drop us a line. Others are taking a trip they have been waiting to take all their lives. Retirees love to tell us about their late-in-life adventures all over the planet.

A few of our postcard correspondents have made quite an impression. Three names come to mind immediately: R.J. Seifert of Newport, whose love of Americana takes him all over the country; Elaine Camerota of Covington, whose interests seem to know no boundaries, and Tom Cornillie of Lebanon, who takes trips few could imagine.

Elaine Camerota

The first reader postcard we received was from Ms. Camerota. She was at her annual conference for the American Board of Examiners in Group Psychotherapy and Psychodrama in Asilomar, Calif.

''This is a great place for a group to hold a meeting. It's set in the woods right on the Pacific Ocean. Tame deer abound and every view is a visual nature poem . . . Heaven!''

That card was published quickly, and a month later she dropped us another note when she stopped at Hocking Hills State Park, en route to Ohio University in Athens where her daughter attended college. Then, just before embarking on a cruise of the Caribbean, she wrote again.

Throughout the next year, Ms. Camerota told us about San Francisco, Tuscany and Japan.

''I'm really interested in going everywhere,'' she says, ''There's not just one place I really want to go.''

Having grown up in Philadelphia, most of her vacations were to New Jersey beaches. Besides one trip to England when she was 27, her serious traveling didn't start until 10 years ago when she and her daughter traveled to Italy and Israel. A trip to Turkey came next and before she knew it, she was planning trips to Alaska, Ireland and all over Canada.

In January 1997, the fates landed her in Asia for six months when her husband, Mike Margolis, earned a Fulbright scholarship to teach at Hangkuk University of Foreign Studies in Korea. She lived in an international apartment community in Seoul and visited much of Korea, Japan and Thailand.

Ms. Camerota would like to see France and Germany. And she and her husband are trying to arrange a trip to Australia to visit friends.

Ms. Camerota's travel advice: ''Be open and stay casual while traveling.''

R.J. Seifert

We first heard from Mr. Seifert about a month after posting our request for postcards. He sent us a photo of his brightly painted van (dubbed ''The Hippie Van'') on the banks of the Ohio River, Cincinnati skyline in the background, with the following note:

''Headed to Dry Tortugas Island, 60 miles west of Key West, Florida. Cards to follow ...''

We received a postcard from Dry Tortugas, a former military post which is only accessible by three-hour boat ride. He also sent a note from a Tarpon Springs sponge dock just north of Tampa, and a postcard from Key West.

This became typical. He would set off on a long trip with a specific theme or destination and keep us posted along the way. And since he always drove, there were lots of interesting sites.

Like when he decided to do the Lewis and Clark trail starting in Minnesota and ending on the Pacific coast. There was a postcard from a bona-fide roadside attraction, ''The World's Largest Buffalo,'' (made of concrete) in North Dakota and Crown Point Vista House, a beauty spot along the Columbia River in Oregon.

A trip through the south produced postcards from Daufuskie Island, S.C. (an enclave of Gullah culture); the Sugar Tree Inn, a retreat along the Blue Ridge Parkway, and Thomas Jefferson's home, Monticello, near Charlottesville, Va.

It's Mr. Seifert's interest in American history and that quest to find the ultimate place where few have been that pulls him out on the highway.

''I love being someplace which is the same as it was hundreds of years ago,'' he says. ''I love the Grand Teton Mountains of Wyoming and many places in Nevada, Utah and Arizona.''

His exploring began in the early 1970s while he was a student at the University of Cincinnati and his friend and his brother -- with whom he still travels -- ''road-tripped'' to Banff, Canada, just north of Calgary in the Rocky Mountains.

Years of familial obligations and career building put traveling on hold. But with his one son in college and an ability to do much of his work as an independent real estate agent by phone, he's off again.

This June he plans to do the Santa Fe trail again, and in August he will see Alaska for the first time. Other places he longs to visit are Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and the Panama Canal.

Tom Cornillie

''For our annual 'Most Excellent Adventure,' my brother and I went to Minnesota for a canoeing expedition. En route, we boarded the car ferry S.S. Badger in Ludington, Mich., with our car stowed below for the trip across a very serene Lake Michigan, arriving in Manitowac, Wisconsin, four hours later. The Badger used to transport rail cars across the lake. It is still powered by a coal-fired steam engine -- very cool! We toured Minneapolis/St. Paul, canoed from Ely, Minn. (the boundary waters), checked out the port in Duluth and drove through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan stopping at Porcupine State Park to check out the waterfalls. Happy Trails . . .''

And he didn't even mention the stop near Traverse City, Mich., to stay in his parents cabin. But this is typical of Mr. Cornillie's trips -- packed with diverse activities.

''You will not find me lying around on a beach when I'm on vacation,'' he says. ''I'm up at 6 a.m. with my itinerary typed up, ready to go.''

We first heard from Mr. Cornillie when he visited New York in September. He not only visited Manhattan (where he saw Chinatown, Little Italy, Soho, Central Park and completed a Circle Liner boat tour in one day), but he attended a wedding in New York's Finger Lakes region and toured a game farm in the Catskills.

''My trips are like my approach to life -- to squeeze as much out of it,'' Mr. Cornillie says. ''I am much more interested in seeing and experiencing things than getting and having them.''

He plans his trips around his main interests: music, brewing traditions, architecture and transportation (he has worked in the field of distribution for many years). Twice he has been to Louisiana's Cajun country to hear music in local dance halls, and this fall he will visit the Chesapeake Bay to see folksinger Pete Seeger's old haunts.

Mr. Cornillie likes to acclimate himself to the regions in which he has lived. While living in Houston after graduating from Michigan State University, he and a friend bought a Day Trips from Houston book and explored on weekends.

While working in Chicago, he volunteered as an architecture tour guide. And now that he's in Ohio, he wants to do a tugboat trip down the Ohio.

Three travelers, three approaches to seeing the country and the world. We'd like to hear about your adventures, too.