About
Meet Sacramento’s King of Day Trips: Grady O’Bryant
Grady O’Bryant never flies solo. Part travel junkie, part entrepreneur, part social butterfly, he’s helped thousands of people get out of their houses and their shells to explore new places together.
“I just love getting people together for travel. Everything’s more fun as a group. Plus, with someone else handling the details, people can just relax and enjoy the journey.”
In the Beginning, There was Wine
After years traveling overseas with the Air Force and working in Alaskan tourism, Grady and his wife decided to start their own tour company. Initially specializing in small tours with a nightlife focus, O’Bryant ventured into wine tours after receiving a call from two women visiting from Mississippi. They wanted to enjoy an afternoon of wine tasting in the Sierra Foothills.
When the Sacramento Convention and Visitors Bureau couldn’t recommend any tour companies servicing local wineries and every local limousine company they contacted steered them to Napa-based trips, “a light bulb went on.” And they knew they were on to something.
In 2007, O’Bryant founded Sacramento Wine & Nightlife Tours sacramentowinetours.com to showcase the wineries surrounding Sacramento. The following year, the company got its big break when the American Wine Society held its annual convention. O’Bryant seized the opportunity, providing wine tours to five different wine regions for more than 250 wine experts over three days.
Today, the company continues to organize tours for locals, vacationers, and corporate clients, offering tours to more than nine wine regions, including Amador, Lodi, Napa, Apple Hill, Fair Play, Clarksburg, Sonoma, Calaveras County, Suisun and Russian River. A stickler for personal service, O’Bryant has visited every winery on each tour, meeting with owners, winemakers and tasting room personnel. This eye for excellence has led to one of the company’s signature experiences: custom winemaker’s dinners. Working closely with leading vintners and an exceptional chef, he has developed authentic and eclectic California winemaker’s dinners suitable for intimate parties to large groups (up to100 people).
Day Trippin’
Always on the lookout for new ways to help people enjoy themselves, O’Bryant created Sacramento Day Trippers in 2008 to take advantage of the city’s proximity to “the good life”. The group’s 2,100 members have enjoyed tours of wine country, San Francisco, Lake Tahoe, Half Moon Bay and other locations in Northern California. He recently took over 130 members on a day trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Upcoming trips include festivals such as the Gilroy Garlic Festival and Fillmore Jazz Festival, Oakland A’s and Raiders games, plays in San Francisco, a Lake Tahoe Cruise, and more.
Sacramento Wine & Nightlife Tours and Sacramento Day Trippers sacdaytrips.com are wildly popular with people wanting to relax while someone else does the driving, and are an economical way to do so, thanks to great group rates. Trips are adult-only, giving those with or without children some quality downtime with their peers, and tend to attract a nice mix of folks in the 35 to 65 year-old age range.
Next Stop, The World
A native of New York City, one of O’Bryant’s dreams was to create a tour of his hometown. Last year he realized that dream, by creating Sacramento World Travelers for out-of-state adventures. In April 2011, O’Bryant took 29 people on his five-day “See New York with a New Yorker Tour.” Armed with the ultimate insider, they hit the ground running, taking their first subway ride and having the quintessential New York experience of eating real New York City pizza, shortly after their arrival. Grady’s knowledge of the city and agent connections reduced the cost of the trip by almost 40 percent (compared to most tours of New York City). His next Big Apple tour is in April & Mayof 2012.
“I created this travel club to connect good people who want to enjoy what Northern California has to offer in a group setting. And now we’re seeing the world together.”
What’s the Future Hold?
New for this summer, Sacramento Wine & Nightlife Tours will conduct Jazz & Blues mini-concerts at wineries located in Amador and Fairplay.
O’Bryant also recently met with a potential partner in San Francisco that conducts overseas tours to destinations such as Africa and Australia. And he’s creating a division that will take advantage of all the discounted travel deals offered by companies such as Groupon and Living Social offer each day.
Not Your Mama’s Tour Company
All of O’Bryant’s ventures are accessible via EscapeSac.com. Keeping up with current technology is as important to O’Bryant as providing exceptional traveling experiences and outstanding customer service. Members can follow all of the tours via Meetup.com, Facebook, and Twitter, and receive personal text updates from O’Bryant. He likes being Internet based and paper-free because it’s more convenient for members and gentler on the Earth.
Check out Sactrips.com, for a great trip in Sacramento and beyond!
Meet Tracy Watson: SacTrips Blog Editor
Hello Sacramento Day Trippers!
My name is Tracy, and I’m a trip-a-holic. I guess it all started when I was six years old and our teacher played a French nursery rhyme called Frere Jacques for us. The mystery (and the beauty) of that foreign language kindled in me an implacable yen for its country of origin. Wherever France was, I was going. And go I did, when 13 years later I took up the invitation from my friend (a Belgian exchange student) to come visit her.
Green as ivy I was, the day I got off that Sabina Airlines flight and struggled to emerge from the airport. When at last I met my hosts and we began to drive through town, I was enchanted with everything I saw. The little shops with awnings and chairs flooding out onto the sidewalks. The town squares, with their statues and baroque architecture. The toy-like cars everyone drove. The oldness of everything: the dates 1789, 1804 and 1667, for example, etched into stone facades of what were now everyday apartments and offices. And mostly the sound of French spoken everywhere.
On that trip, I learned what a real Belgian waffle tastes like, (divinely coated in caramelized sugar), the joys of watching a French film, in a French speaking country, and how magical it is to be lost in Paris! In fact, in many ways you could say I sort of found myself on that trip. I discovered that I could negotiate botched travel reservations, having to sleep in a train station overnight, and winding up stuck sharing a bunk with a charming Swedish hosteller… but that’s another story.
That was the beginning of my love affair with foreign travel, but that was not the beginning of my love affair with traveling. That, as they say, is in the blood. Perhaps it’s the thumbprint of all the migrations we’ve made, but from as far back as I can recall, my childhood was filled with trips. Trips across the southwest to visit family, trips up north to go camping, and skiing (or rather falling!) trips to Tahoe and Reno. And to this day, whenever I can, I love to get on the road.
And so, if you’ll let me, I’ll accompany you on your journeys. Sometimes I’ll be the scout, scoping out the cool stuff to do. Sometimes I’ll be riding shotgun right along with you. And if the feeling strikes, I might break out my wingwoman, and help you sashay up to that cutie at the bar!
Either way, we’re going to have a great time!
Cheers,
Tracy
Did someone say Road Trip?!?
