Backroads in the News

Guided tour specialist Backroads, which specializes in cycling, hiking and multisport vacations, knows that a love of athletic pursuits in the great outdoors is a lifelong passion for many. And to appropriately scale its offerings to different age groups, its trips range from active to easygoing, with a lot of flexibility built into the offerings that make them especially appropriate for senior travel tours.

Getting to know your way around a new town can be challenging, whether you’re traveling or relocating. In either case, I’ve always been a proponent of doing so via running or cycling, thanks to the unique vantage point the activities offer. When I temporarily relocated to the Boulder, Colo., area late last summer from the sea-level Mid-Atlantic region, I decided to apply my approach with a city bike tour. This one came with a twist, however: We took to the town on electric bikes.

Most tours for older travelers do a good job meeting the needs of travelers in their 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and even 90s, but there are some travel tour companies for seniors that go above and beyond. And while age is just one of the many factors that defines your travel style, it’s still nice to know you’re traveling with a company that puts in the extra effort to make their tours for seniors really work for everyone on the trip. Here are the travel tour companies for seniors that shine especially bright when it comes to the offerings, amenities, and details that serve older travelers.

Berkeley-based Backroads has been leading guided biking, hiking, and multi-sport adventure trips around the world since 1979, when founder Tom Hale first had an idea in the middle of the night to start a bike touring company and encourage active travel (Backroads.com). They’ve slowly started adding back some of their international destinations, taking all precautions, and welcoming travelers again safely. They’ve also added E-bikes, which is a game-changer for those who may be intimidated by the thought of pedaling over anything steeper than a speed bump.

Backroads, the leader in outdoor travel, has trips for families whether your kids are in elementary school, high school, college or 20-something. There are trips in U.S. national parks, as well as Canada for 2022. Both companies also offer options for private trips.

Backroads, for example, is featuring two Multi-Adventure Croatia to Montenegro tours – one "Easygoing" for people like myself who prefer a dolce tempo pace (Backroads lingo for slower travel and e-bike assistance) – both of which also include kayaking and sailing.

One positive side effect of the coronavirus pandemic was a spike in participation in active, outdoor and fitness activities. According to a 2021 study by the Outdoor Industry Association, “Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, more Americans have turned to the outdoors, some for the first time and others for the first time in many years."

Contrary to impressions gleaned from the familiar title of Strauss’ beloved waltz, the Danube is not blue. Like most rivers, it has a grayish hue, and in some parts a muddy murkiness. However, catch the Danube in the right light, perhaps as you picnic on its banks after a bike ride, and an ultramarine glimmer might catch your eye. Despite misleading references regarding its color, the marvelous Danube surely conjures more storybook visions than any other river on Earth.

I LOVE Backroads. What’s to love? The company layers its active adventures, primarily cycling, on top of cruises, both ocean and river. That layering provides the perfect adventure: You spend your days being active, exploring Europe the way many Europeans do, straddling a saddle. Your floating hotel is your oasis for rest and replenishment.

Some people absolutely do not want stuff. Instead of swearing off giving them presents altogether, consider gifting them an experience. You may not be able to afford to foot the bill for their vacation to Europe, but you can send them on a mini adventure that could be a highlight of their trip.

There's something for everyone this holiday shopping season when you shop local and from the heart. And there are tons of places to find that perfect gift for someone on your list. We've rounded up some of our favorite gifts that can be bought in Kentucky, from sweet treats and bourbon to books and gifts of experience to self-care items, gifts for kids and more.

California is often presented in the media as an object of disaster, as Tom Hale underscored to me. Mr. Hale is the founder of Backroads, the Berkeley-based travel company, which has been operating biking and outdoors-oriented trips in the United States and 54 other countries for four decades. It deals with fallout from it all, from hurricanes in Baton Rouge to floods in Berlin. As we all know, climate change is not a state or country specific issue.

Seeing the world on two wheels is a pretty terrific way to get back into the swing of travel. The grand prize for so many riders is Europe and some of the best tour operators in the world have obliged with new biking itineraries for 2022. If you’re a bit out of training, don’t worry, because there are always support vehicles sweeping the route and E-bikes are an option on all of these trips.

As many of us slowly resume traveling, nothing epitomizes “slow travel” more than a walking trip. The best itineraries are a combination of dramatic scenery, wonderful regional cuisine and a pace that offers exercise and adventure in equal measure. It’s the perfect way to reflect on the events of the past two years and to contemplate what lies ahead. Here are five new walking trips that debut in 2022 from some of the best tour operators in the business.

In response to surging demand, active-travel specialist Backroads has added 13 new trips to its North America offerings for 2022, including a mix of biking, walking and multi-adventure tours.

My sister-in-law got the phone call at dinnertime the night before we were to drive to a Wyoming guest ranch for a five-day, three-generation family vacation. There was a coronavirus outbreak among the ranch’s staff; in two days, the numbers had climbed from three to 18 infections. The staff members with the coronavirus and any others who had been in close contact with them were quarantined. The ranch’s chief operating officer said we were still welcome to come but warned that the service would not be at the ranch’s usual level. My brother and sister-in-law, who had booked and planned the vacation, opted to take the full refund the ranch offered, not because of how the outbreak would affect the service, but for safety.   The nine of us, ranging in age from 7 to 83, had gathered in Jackson, where my fiance, Derek, and I live, for the half-day drive to the ranch. We were crushed, but we didn’t doubt that canceling was the right decision. After briefly mourning the loss of our intended vacation, we jumped into action to create a Plan B.

At Backroads, an adventure travel company that segments its family trips by children’s ages, bookings for family trips next year are up 150 percent from where they were at this point in 2019, with Ecuador, Costa Rica and Peru surging for fall and the holidays. “Pent-up demand is huge,” said Tom Hale, founder and president of Backroads. “People are planning ahead and putting vacations on their calendars now so that they can have an adventure on the horizon to look forward to.”

With many Americans vaccinated but many international borders still closed, tour operators say domestic demand is not only booming but in some cases exceeding supply. At the adventure company Backroads, founder and president Tom Hale said summer trips are mostly sold out, with few opportunities to add itineraries because hotels in always-popular places like national parks and other outdoors-focused destinations are booked up.

Backroads has trips scheduled for Iceland, Croatia, Greece and the United Kingdom this year. Their Santorini & Crete Multi-Adventure Tour has departures starting as early as July.

Berkeley-based Backroads has been leading fantastic small-group hiking, cycling, and other adventure-oriented tours since 1979. Cycling trips take place on custom-built titanium bikes, lodging ranges from small luxury ships (imagine cycling beside and sailing down the Danube) to five-star hotels, and the food is as finely crafted as the routes. This year, watch for new U.S.-based trips like a five-day cycling tour of the Hudson River Valley, as well as weekend or long weekend getaways in Aspen’s glacial valleys and Texas Hill Country.

Backroads, which has run more than 200 of its trips since the pandemic began, assigns equipment such as hiking poles to individuals at the start of a trip to minimize gear sharing (it also sterilizes equipment daily). 

As part of the movement to make travel more meaningful, the active multi-sport tour company Backroads is running a new Historic Underground Railroad Multi-Adventure Tour in Georgia and South Carolina. This tour is organized in conjunction with Outdoor Afro, a not for profit network of recreation leaders in 30 states who connect people of color to the outdoors and promote inclusion.