Stories

“Did you ever think,” I said to my son, halfway through a Backroads trip to Argentina’s Lake District, “that one day you’d be sipping champagne on a private boat in the middle of a lake in Patagonia?” “This is epic,” came his response. It wasn’t the only epic moment on that trip. There was the snowcapped Andes, the Southern Cross in the night sky, the wine tasting. How many 22-year-olds, I mused, could speak intelligently about the regions and varieties of Argentinian wines? This is just part of what growing up traveling gave my son.

In honor of Mother's Day and all the inspirational, kind and strong moms who keep things running smoothly (both at Backroads and in life!), we want to shine a spotlight on one of our favorite moms in our Backroads community. Meet Alison Iles, a former Trip Leader and mom of two champion mountain bikers in Canada. Alison has worn many hats at Backroads in her 35-year tenure, most recently that of Regional Director of the UK, Ireland and Scandinavia. We sat down with Alison to talk about travel, motherhood and her thoughts and advice on raising kids who embrace active outdoor adventures.

There are certain places on our trips that guests remember long after they’ve gone home. The Blackford Highland Games field is one of them.

This Earth Day, we’re taking a closer look at how sustainability shows up across Backroads, from how we operate behind the scenes to how we design our trips and how we give back to the communities where we live, work and explore. We don’t think of responsible travel as just one initiative. We are taking a holistic approach by making choices every day to reduce our impact and support the places that make our trips possible.

National parks are the places where many of us formed our fondest memories with family and friends.

I recently returned from my third Backroads trip. My latest trip, the Patagonia Lake District Multi-Adventure Tour, looked a little different from the others. Besides the obvious—my previous trips were both in Europe and this trip was to Argentina—my January 2026 trip was my first Backroads trip in nearly 20 years. My travel companion was my husband, Blake, instead of my mom. And, unlike my earlier Backroads adventures, there were no children in our group.

This year, World Bicycle Relief is reaching an incredible milestone: one million Buffalo Bicycles delivered to people who need reliable transportation to reach school, health care, markets and opportunity. And for Backroads, it also marks ten years of supporting this work alongside our guests and staff who have helped turn two wheels into real-world change.

I’m on a small electric-powered wooden ferry boat, skimming quietly along Slovenia’s Lake Bohnij, the misty Julian Alps reflecting in the mirror-calm water. This is why I travel, I think, the landscape before me an answer to a question I didn’t realize I had.

As a Backroads Trip Leader and a musician, I’ve always believed you can learn just as much about a place through its music as through its landscapes. Music carries history in a way few other things can.

In the Galápagos, sustainability is a fundamental philosophy of local culture and policy, further emphasized by the islands’ remoteness and subsequent scarcity of certain resources. Santa Cruz Island is home to roughly 20,000 people—over half of the human population of the archipelago—with smaller agricultural communities spread far beyond its main coastal town of Puerto Ayora.