Zephyr Blog

Beer tourism is not a very established segment of the travel market and active beer tourism even less so. We are hoping to change that. Beer tourism does exist. Search for the term on Google - in quotes - and you will get over 34,000 results. For the most part, I would identify beer tourism as what happens when someone visits another city or country and decides to seek out a local brewery in that area. The beer tourism is sort of tangential to the travel already taking place. One step up in the beer tourism ladder is when someone plans a vacation centered around visiting breweries. A further step up from that is when a company organizes a beer tour to an area, in which participants visit a number of breweries. Tours like this do exist - Belgium is a popular destination.…

This past week we had our annual family reunion, here where I live in Colorado. 21 of us gathered for three days and nights of game playing, eating, and activities. Before the reunion, my immediate family gathered in Utah for our own small vacation. Nine of us (my parents, two brothers, and their families) did a four-day rafting trip down the Green River in Colorado and Utah. This trip was my dad's choice. At 81, he isn't hiking quite as much as he used to but is still quite active and enjoys a few thrills on the river. We selected a river that would provide Class III rapids, which are suitable for most ages and, more importantly, levels of adventure. We went with a local outfitter and the trip was excellent: very good guides, excellent meals, and a nice group. We…

We are converting this blog to a new format. Instead of just me writing about the travels and experiences of an adventure travel tour company owner, we will start to include posts from our employees, guides, and - occasionally - even a Zephyr traveler. I'll still be posting quite a bit, updating you with my travels and the direction Zephyr is heading. In addition, you'll hear from Reno, Kris, Sonya, and Erika as we each live our adventure lifestyle. Unfortunately, in updating the Wordpress software to a new format, we lost two months of posts. You'll see a gap starting after June 13. We'll just fill it up with new posts soon! Allan Wright Zephyr Adventures owner

My friend and Zephyr traveler Rick Otis sent me the link to the below video. Now, I don't usually read that many forwarded emails or links to online content. But my friends don't tend to forward me many of those emails either so, when they do, I definitely take the time to see what the fuss is about. In this case, Casey Neistat made a funny and meaningful video about getting a ticket for riding outside the bike lane in New York. It's worth watching. The video has had over 2.6 million views and 41,000 people took the time to "like" it on YouTube. (528 people, as of the time of this writing, "disliked" the video. One wonders if those are NYC cops.) The amazing thing is that Casey is a good film maker and has a number of other videos on YouTube but most of those are in the 30,000…

Zephyr Adventures' Idaho Skating Adventure was recently featured in the summer issue of Montana Headwall magazine. Zephyr alumnus Jason Cohen wrote a great article about the tour. It is interesting a magazine like Montana Headwall, which focuses on outdoor activities in the Bozeman area, would feature a story on inline skating in Idaho. In part, I think they liked that we are based in Red Lodge, Montana. In part, I think the editor like the quirkiness of the story. In fact, it was big news in the inline skating community a week or so ago when the Oregonian wrote an article about the death of inline skating. They took reports from the industry sporting goods association that showed how far and how fast "rollerblading" had fallen. All true. On the other hand, we are likely at…

We are running quite a few active wine adventures now and people often ask whether they need to be wine experts to enjoy these tours. The answer is no. In fact, you really need not have any wine knowledge to enjoy our wine adventures and can even participate if you don't drink wine. If you are a wine expert, please realize these tours are combinations of wine, food, culture, and activity and not designed to be for wannabe-sommeliers. So based on that, I'd like to present a fantastic video I just found. Amanda Tice of Cuisine Insight interviews wine expert Kevin Zraly from a few years ago. I only watched through the first four minutes and love the way he breaks down wine into something totally simplistic. Anyone have any different opinions?

I returned a few days ago from running two bicycle tours in Provence. I have to say the area is really special for bike touring. In fact, my co-guide Giovanni, who runs our Italian tours and is ardently pro-Italian whether it be wine, food, or coffee, was salivating over the Provencal food, wine, scenery, and culture. Our tour completes a 360-degree loop around the fantastic city of Avignon, at one time home to the Popes and currently a beautiful walled city with streets closed to traffic and full of life. We spend several days in the heavily agricultural area of St. Remy-de-Provence and then several more days in the Cotes-du-Rhone wine area. But one of the most special aspects for Giovanni and me was how flat most of the roads are. Our short and medium routes on four of the six…

If you saw our last post, you will know that we recently put out a call for a new Wine, Food, & Beer Tour Marketing position. Well, we have filled that position. And then some. Before I tell you who we hired, I wanted to provide a few insights into the hiring process. We only advertised the position in three places: the Boulder, Colorado page (where I live) of Craig's List; the job board of the Adventure Travel Trade Association; and WineJobs.com. We had the job posting only open for about 10 days and in that time received 156 applications! Most of these came from WineJobs.com. I feel as if a recruitment effort is similar to talking to potential travelers. These are people who are interested in our company, who spent a lot of time to apply, and who are potential ambassadors…

Zephyr Adventures is hiring a new office employee to conduct the marketing for our food, wine, and beer tours. Big news! As regular readers of this blog will know, Zephyr is a small company. We have 3.5 full-time employees (including me), so adding a new employee is an important decision. However, we feel with the economy improving and our active food and drink tour niche so unique, the time is right. Who runs active food, wine, and beer tours anyway? Well, there are a few companies out there but not many. Most adventure tour companies don't focus on this aspect and most food and wine tour companies don't include activities such as hiking and biking. We think the combination is unbeatable, hence our enthusiasm for future growth of this component of Zephyr. We are specifically…

I was in South America the last two weeks on vacation. My girlfriend Devon and I had a wedding to attend in Montevideo, Uruguay and we decided to make it a three-part trip that included Buenose Aires, Argentina; Uruguay; and Rio de Jeneiro, Brazil. We had good times in both Argentina and Uruguay leading up to the wedding. The day after the wedding we were scheduled to fly to Rio and had booked a hotel for three nights so we could attend the final days of Carnival. We were both a bit leery about Rio and Carnival but figured the timing and location were perfect to add this extension. Unfortunately, things went downhill immediately after the wedding. Schedules are late in this part of the world and we were getting quite used to dinners scheduled at 11:00 PM! Uruguayan weddings are…