Walking Adventures

This Northwest-based company organizes trips across the globe and specializes in walking tours
April 16, 2022 at 2:35 p.m.
photo courtesy of WalkingAdventures.com
photo courtesy of WalkingAdventures.com

Northwest based travel company, Walking Adventures, had its start over 50 years ago. Although the company serves travelers of many ages, they also offer senior group travel vacations and tours. (walkingadventures.com/senior-group-travel-tours/.)

Walking Adventures is a family-owned travel planning and tour operator offering travel programs on all seven continents. The company specializes in walking tours. 

A half-century ago, George Friesen, a high school history and foreign language teacher, began organizing tours to Europe.

In 1989, he started to base all of his tours on the winning combination of motorcoach sightseeing blended with two-to-four-hour walks at tour destinations. Many of the tours also include train travel and river cruising.

The program became so popular that in 1992 George’s son, Dan, left his job as a CPA and joined his father. Dan's vision included expanding the company’s reach to new areas of the planet beyond Europe. 

George, the founder of Walking Adventures, with his son Dan in 1992. Dan now runs the company. Photo courtesy of WalkingTours.com.

 

George eventually stepped away from the company and Dan has been running it ever since. 

Dan's blog on the company website offers a running history of how the company got started. 

“Teachers’ salaries were low in those days and Dad was always looking for summertime jobs. One idea he discovered early in his teaching career was leading trips to Europe in the summer for his high school German students. After a couple years of student tours, Dad figured out that summer was the primary season for all kinds of European tourism and found a job as a tour guide for a local travel company. Turned out he had a knack for it. And he decided that adult tours were easier to lead than student tours. 

"Soon he had his own one-man travel company – Friesen Tour Service – and began building a reputation as someone who provided a fun, quality experience in Europe. He led a wide variety of groups: classical music tours, woodcarving tours, Reformation history tours, and many general interest sightseeing tours. If you traveled with Dad, you heard ‘Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin,’ from the hit musical Oklahoma, at least once each tour. People loved him.”

The idea of focusing on walking tours came about in 1988 when a stop from an “Alpine Europe” tour coincided with a local walk. Organized walking tours, called volkswalks, had been a popular pastime in Europe for many years. It wasn’t long before George altered his future European tours to include local volkswalks.  

As their website (www.walkingadventures.com) states, “Walking is the oldest form of exploration, and we believe it is also the purest form of travel. Walking slows us down and gives our senses a chance to connect with our surroundings. Sights, sounds, smells, textures and even the tastes of a destination become real and focused when we see the world from a walker’s point of view… Close to the ground is a term we use to capture our belief in connecting travelers with the destination we are exploring together.” 

One of the company’s goals is to avoid “tourist bubbles” – hotels, restaurants, excursions, shopping venues – that are pushed by the tourism industry. “Walking tours take us to out-of-the-way places, revealing a region’s true character and offering us the chance to view often overlooked local sights, which most travelers never get the opportunity to see… 'Safe but not scripted’ is another phrase that captures our travel philosophy.”

Some comments from Walking Adventure travelers about their favorite experience:
"Hard to pick a favorite. They were all unique in their own way. Loved being able to experience and hike some of the Appalachian Trail without having to wear a backpack and sleep on the ground!" --from an APPALACHIAN TRAIL trip; "I liked traveling through the various landscapes, seeing the Imperial Cities with the locals and then the quiet and calm of the desert and the mountains. The people of Morocco were very kind and seemed really happy that we were visiting their country." --from a recent MOROCCO trip. 

Walking Adventures International offers trips to destinations in the Unites States as well as across the globe. View some upcoming adventures at walkingadventures.com/findadventure.
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