California Adventure Travel Tours and Trip Packages

Compare Top California Adventure Travel Tours from Backroads, OARS, NOLS and more!

Perhaps no other destination in the world has as many well-known spots as California. Just mention Yosemite National Park, Napa Valley, the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, Fisherman’s Wharf, the Hearst Castle, Disneyland, the Griffith Observatory, or the Hollywood Sign, and people automatically know that you’ve taken a recent trip to California.

But what happens when you put the typical guidebook must-sees aside and have some adventures in California with a twist?

Biking along Route 1 on California’s central coast — where rugged cliffs plunge into the deep-blue Pacific — would qualify. Or how about rafting the Lower Klamath River as it gently winds through the northwest corner of the state near the Oregon border? One of the first rivers in California to be granted National Wild and Scenic status, the Klamath flows free for 180 miles to the Pacific Ocean. Its path through the pristine wilderness of the Siskiyou Mountains is a corridor through history: Gold miners flooded this region in the mid 1800s, and some old mining sites still line the Klamath’s banks.

Seeing the massive face of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park from the valley floor is one of those California attractions that is sure to astound; but for an unexpected turn, why not take the family on a run of the Class III-IV white-water of the Merced River? This waterway runs its swift course through the southern part of Yosemite National Park and along an expanse of burly pine forests, jutting rocks, and silky beaches.

If you prefer action-packed paddling from put-in to take-out, try the Tuolumne River in Yosemite, considered by many to be the best California white-water rafting trip. You’ll enter a remote wilderness with tumbling creeks, waterfalls, and glassy pools.

Or instead of seeing Death Valley through the windshield of your car, try biking through the Mojave Desert, reveling in its peacefulness. Stop for a climb to get a red-tailed hawk’s perspective on this mountain-and-basin topography, or pedal across salt flats to the lowest point in the U.S.

American poet Robert Frost once wrote, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

This year, be sure to make your California tour different.

Browse our current California adventure travel offerings below.