Canada West

Western Canada is the trip for families who want the Rockies without the heat and crowds of the American classics. You land in Vancouver or Calgary, collect the RV and are in the mountains within a day; after that come turquoise lakes, glaciers that reach almost to the road and more wildlife than your kids can count. Distances are big but the roads are good, and the national parks of Banff, Jasper, Yoho and Kootenay form one continuous mountain block — you drive from park to park without ever leaving the mountains. That makes this one of the most rewarding RV trips you can plan in North America, provided you take the season and the reservations seriously.

Vancouver is a soft landing: a city by the sea with Stanley Park, Granville Island and beaches where the kids can run off the long flight before you pick up the RV. From there the Sea-to-Sky Highway follows fjord-like inlets and waterfalls up to Whistler, where the gondolas run in summer too and black bears regularly graze along the ski runs. Choose Calgary as your gateway and you skip the coast: ninety minutes after pick-up you are already in Banff — the shorter version for those with ten days instead of two weeks. The big rental companies have depots in both cities, so a one-way from one to the other is easy to arrange.

The Icefields Parkway between Lake Louise and Jasper is the heart of the trip: almost three hundred kilometres of mountain road past glaciers, lakes and waterfalls, with the Columbia Icefield halfway. Give it a full day and keep the drives on either side short. Banff and Lake Louise are busy, and that is no exaggeration: in high season you reach Lake Louise and Moraine Lake almost exclusively by Parks Canada shuttle or Roam bus, so leave the RV at the campground and reserve your shuttle seat in advance. Jasper is the quieter, roomier counterweight, with elk wandering right into town; Yoho and Kootenay are optional detours for anyone with a spare day.

Wildlife here is not a chance but a certainty: black bears and grizzlies, elk, moose, bighorn sheep and mountain goats. Parks Canada sets clear distance rules — at least one hundred metres from bears, thirty metres from other large animals — and campgrounds run a bare-campsite rule: food, coolers and rubbish always stored in the RV or in the bear-proof bins. Make a game of it with the kids from day one, carry binoculars instead of walking closer, and stay in or beside the RV when a bear is standing by the road. It is exactly the experience you came for, as long as you give the animals their space.

Two things shape the planning more than anything else. First, the season: from June to September the high park roads and most campgrounds are open, but August is also the peak of the wildfire season in Western Canada and smoke can wipe out views for days — follow the alerts from Parks Canada and the provinces and build in a spare day. Second, reservation pressure: the campgrounds of Banff and Jasper open through the Parks Canada reservation service on fixed dates in winter, and the sought-after sites go fast. The altitude is gentler than in the American Rockies, but the nights are cold — pack layers and keep the first day easy.