Motorcoach Guided Tours and Trips for Boomers
My wife Mary Ann and I just returned from a 10-day motorcoach tour titled “New England Fall Foliage Tour.” Previously, we did a 14-day motorcoach tour around Italy and a 10-day motorcoach tour of Germany and Austria. Those two were long ago, so we really didn’t know what to expect from this trip.
A guided tour is when you travel with other travelers on a planned itinerary that span several locations and attractions. With our motor-coach guided tour, we had two tour guides and a bus driver. Guided motorcoach tours are very popular with seniors.
On our trip, we saw the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Next, we had lunch at Quincy Market in Boston, ate Lobster at Boothbay Harbor in Maine, and took a dinner cruise on Lake Champlain in Burlington, VT. Since it was a Fall Foliage Tour, we drove past the Smokey Mountains in NC, the White Mountains in NH, the Catskills in NY, and Shenandoah Valley in Virginia.
Sounds exciting, right? Yes, it was. It was also very frustrating and tiring at times. The tour operator replaced the tour guides at the last minute, so we were stuck with two people who didn’t know much about where we were going, so they had to try to read descriptions off the internet.
In my opinion, the trip was also too long. We drove through 16 states in 10 days, resulting in two days of getting on the bus at 8 a.m. and not getting to the hotel until 8 p.m. Ugh! This was hard on me, as I usually walk every day. Of course, I also ate a little too much junk food.
Roll, roll, roll your coach…
This was a local tour company out of Lula, Georgia, recommended by several people in our active adult community. Several experienced motorcoach fellow travelers told us these problems would never happen on a guided tour with a company, like Collette Tours and Road Scholar Educational Tours. Their schedules are less rushed, and the guides are more well-informed.
On our tour, we had 44 fellow travelers, leaving only about 3 empty seats. All of us were aged 55 and over. Only four of us were from our active adult community. There were lots of single women. In fact, most of the fellow tourists were women! I was only one of ten men on the trip.
We all felt like true survivors at the end of our trip. We were tired, sore, and ready to sleep in our own beds.
For all the bad, there was even more good.
Motorcoach tours are better than driving yourself and an excellent way to see a bunch of sites on one trip. They have their place, but I think we like a more relaxing pace.
Maybe that’s why we have taken over 25 cruises.
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Originally published July 19, 2023
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