Escorted Camping Trips Seek to Enlist Americans

One of travel’s great adventures is taking to the open road and exploring the huge and diverse United States. For those with the urge to do it but with limited time and budgets, two companies that are among America’s top purveyors of high-quality, low-cost escorted tours have the answer: escorted camping.

Relying heavily on hostels and camping in four-person tents, these trips are from AmeriCan and Roadrunner, which have 20 years’ combined experience in the business and cater to a largely (but by no means exclusively) young and footloose clientele. Most of the participants (many of them single) are between 18 and 38, with a smattering of over-40s.

The trips range from one to nearly six weeks. Daily costs start at $47, which includes land travel and accommodations, plus $7 a day for meals.

Now, after being bought by the company that owns TrekAmerica, a similar tour operator, AmeriCan and Roadrunner are trying to attract more Americans. (Currently, the majority of clients are European or Australian.) Together for the first time, they’ve released a catalog of their offerings through March 2001.

The basic setup and mode of travel remain the same: You hit the road in a comfortable van that carries 13 to 17 people, is equipped with air-conditioning and a sound system and is driven by a tour leader.

Roadrunner’s highlight is its new Ecuador trip, a two-week trek costing $1,379, with nine departures out of Quito between April and December. It’s a diverse itinerary, from mountain villages to the Amazon basin. (Given recent rumblings from an active volcano outside Quito, a Roadrunner manager emphasizes the importance of buying trip cancellation insurance.)

Roadrunner’s other South American offering is the 15-day “Inca Trail” tour in Peru and Bolivia, with highlights including Lima, the Amazon, Cuzco, Machu Picchu, Lake Titicaca and La Paz. The price starts at $1,399, plus $204 for internal flights.

The third Latin America option is AmeriCan’s 12-day “Maya Adventure” in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula, with year-round departures starting at $689.

North of the Rio Grande, Roadrunner has five one- to three-week itineraries ranging from $499 for seven days to $1,529 for 21 days.

From AmeriCan, one-week trips include the “California Cooler” ($449 to $529, depending on departure date), the “Denali Adventure” in Alaska ($639 to $659) and the Seattle-to-Calgary “Rocky Mountain Explorer” ($369 to $459).

On the longer side, “Western Safari” (13 days, $789 to $869) covers such highlights as the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, Yosemite, San Francisco and the Sierra Nevada.

Starting in April at $899, there’s a 19-day loop from New York to Miami to Memphis and back with plenty of stops along the way.

The longest trip is the 39-day “All AmeriCan,” which goes from New York to Los Angeles or vice versa, throwing just about every AmeriCan destination into the pot, from Niagara Falls to San Francisco.

The cost is $1,889 to $1,999.

Other destinations in the catalog include the Pacific Northwest, the national parks of the West, New England and Quebec.

Most AmeriCan trips run between April and November; five of the seven Roadrunner tours are year-round.

For more information: AmeriCan/Roadrunner, telephone (800) 873-5872, Internet https://www.americanadventures.com.