Fifty years ago, Roland Neave led his first tour group into Wells Gray Provincial Park at $5 per person.
This month, as Well Gray Tours celebrates its 50th anniversary, he's leading more groups into the park, but the cost is $900 a pop.
"The tour has certainly changed," said Neave with a laugh.
"In the early 1970s it was a day tour by bus from Kamloops and we stopped for a picnic lunch of hot dogs. This month the tours are still by coach, but they are three days with two overnights at Wells Gray Inn and restaurant meals. We've come a long way."
Wells Gray certainly has come a long way.
It packages about 95 all-inclusive tours a year that British Columbians take as bus jaunts to drivable locales or fly to destinations around the world for tours and cruises.
It was important for Wells Gray Tours to return to its namesake park this month to mark the company's 50th birthday.
In the five decades since it launched, Wells Gray Tours has become the largest outbound tour company in British Columbia, offering group holidays all over the world.
From that first office in Kamloops, it has also expanded to Kelowna, Vernon, Penticton and Victoria.
But Wells Gray Tours never forgets its roots.
That's why, on May 20, 2022, 50 years to the day after that first-ever tour, the coach will roll into Well Gray Provincial Park again for a special commemorative three-day trip.
It will be free for most participants as a thank you for them being loyal customers and earning Diamond status by taking 70 or more trips with Wells Gray over the years.
Two more tours of the park are also on tap this month for that aforementioned $900 per person.
There are still a few places available on those two tours.
Wells Gray's key to success, whether its a quick jaunt to see a musical in Vancouver, cruise the Mexican Riviera, tour Iceland or ride the Trans-Siberian Railway, is packaging and tour directors.
"Our tours are all cost-effective, mostly all-inclusive packaged trips where we do all the planning and take care of all the logistics," said Neave.
"There's a tour director on every tour so we can offer exceptional service and really look after our customers. Most of our customers are retirees who have the time to travel and appreciate us taking care of everything."
The May 20, 1972 foray into Wells Gray, which is located north of Kamloops off Highway 5 at Clearwater, saw Neave lead 40-members of the Shuswap Thompson River Research & Development Association.
They were protesting BC Hydro's proposal to put seven hydroelectric dams on the Clearwater River through the park, flooding most of it, including part of Helmcken Falls, the 4th highest waterfall in Canada at 464 feet.
Neave led more tours that summer and the petitions and letters of opposition from tour participants helped to convince BC Hydro to abandon its plan.
Neave is from Kamloops and was a geography student at Simon Fraser University at the time.
When the summers of 1973, 1974 and 1975 came around, he and fellow geography students organized more day tours into the park via a non-profit company funded by federal grants for students.
Later in 1975, when the grants ran out and Neave graduated, he decided to officially set up a tour business until a job in geography came up.
That job in geography never came up because Neave was too busy building Wells Gray Tours over the next half century.
The first expansions were overnight trips to Mount Revelstoke and the Rocky Mountains, multi-day trips to California and Arizona, coach-and-fly trips to the Maritimes and many, many gambling junkets to Reno.
In 1999, the first overseas trip saw a Wells Gray group fly to Sydney, Australia to board a Holland America cruise ship to Singapore.
"Any given year, we were doing 95 tours," said Neave.
"Twenty to 25 of those are coach tours close to home and the rest are what we call 'intermodal' because they could involve bus, flights, train and-or a cruise."
Along the way, theatre tours to see musicals such as Showboat and Phantom of the Opera in Vancouver became staples, just as coach-and-fly tours to entertainment mecca Branson, Missouri did.
When the smash-hit musical Hamilton comes to Vancouver in June, Wells Gray Tours will be there.
Neave has been to 77 countries on Wells Gray trips as both a tour director and as a passenger with his wife, Anne.
His favourite trips have been Iceland (he loves remote and uncrowded places) and a small-ship cruise through the Northwest Passage.
He's never been to Victoria Falls, the spectacular waterfall on the Zambezi River in southern Africa, but wants to go someday soon.
With business coming back after two years of pandemic, Well Gray is also looking forward to trips to Egypt and Jordan, a cruise above the Arctic Circle in Norway and a river cruise on the Douro River in Portugal.
Neave's son, Fraser, has taken over much of the tour planning and operation of the company, but the founder is still heavily involved.
"I love the work, so I will continue on and will only retire when I wake up one day and don't look forward to going into work," said Neave, 70.
