Forget high gas prices. Fret not over rising airfares. You can still travel close to home and leave the nagging details to someone else with these package tours of the Midwest.
Mayflower Tours (800-323-7604; www.mayflowertours.com) has been a Midwest mainstay for years. The Downers Grove-based tour operator may be best known locally for its bus tours from Chicago to Branson, Mo. These trips start and end at your own front door when the company sends its free van to pick you up and take you to the motor coach. The four-day “Branson Blast” includes door-to-door transportation, three hotel nights, six meals and five shows for $749.
Branson is only the beginning. Among Mayflower’s other Chicago departures are some real finds. The three-day “Crossing Lake Michigan” includes a Lake Michigan crossing on the S.S. Badger, two hotel nights, four meals, two live shows and a carriage tour of Shipshewana, Ind., for $639. Other Mayflower tours head to Wisconsin’s Door County for fall foliage, Michigan’s Frankemuth for Oktoberfest and Indiana’s French Lick Resort for its casino. There’s a river barge excursion on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. And they even have the quintessential Midwest family vacation to South Dakota’s Mt. Rushmore, Deadwood and the Badlands.
Amtrak Vacations (800-268-7252; www.amtrakvacations.com) has two package tours that depart from Chicago. Sample prices for a round-trip to Minneapolis/St. Paul start at $265, which includes two nights at the Hyatt Place Mall of America. The hotel is about 14 miles from the train station. You’ll have to make separate arrangements for transfers. Sample prices for a round-trip to St. Louis start at $190 and include round-trip rail, two nights at the Holiday Inn Select St. Louis Downtown and admission to the Gateway Arch Tram. Again, transfers to the hotel, about 1 1/2 miles from the train station — are on your own.
Discovery Center (773-348-8120; www.discoverycenter.cc), a continuing-education institute, occasionally ventures away from its home base in Chicago. Among its upcoming one-day trips this summer are white-water rafting adventures on the Vermilion River in Illinois and the St. Joseph River in Indiana. For either river, the $59 fee covers round-trip bus transportation from the Discovery Center at 2940 N. Lincoln, equipment, instruction and guides. A white-water-and-camping trip also is scheduled for late August on the wild Wolf River in Wisconsin. The $165 fee covers round-trip bus transportation from the Discovery Center, rafting equipment, instruction, guides and tents. You’ll bring your own sleeping bag.
Other tours may not depart from Chicago, but they offer some interesting Midwest itineraries. At time of research, the Sierra Club (415-977-5522; www.sierraclub.org/outings) still had openings for service programs in Iowa’s Loess Hills National Natural Landmark for $645 and for work in Wisconsin and Minnesota along the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway for $515. Try GORP Travel (www.gorptravel.com) for volunteer work, such as the $555 week in the Shawnee National Forest, or the 12-day road -bike tour of the Dakotas for $3,300. High-end operator Tauck Tours (800-788-7885; www.tauck.com) has an eight-day, seven-night tour of “Michigan’s Great Lakes & Grand Hotels” starting at $2,130.
