Calgary to Yellowstone and Glacier National Park - CanaDream

Seventeen nights and 2,487 kilometres in a loop from Calgary in a motorhome, down into Montana and Wyoming and back through Banff.

Waterton Park comes first in southern Alberta, where the mountains rise straight out of the prairie with no foothills at all, then Helena in Montana, the state capital, built on a gold gulch that ran through what is now the main street.

Yellowstone follows and takes several days: the first national park anywhere, sitting on an active caldera, with roughly half the world’s geysers, the Lamar Valley for wolves and bison, and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. Missoula comes next, then Glacier National Park, where the Going-to-the-Sun Road climbs over Logan Pass between hanging valleys. Banff and Lake Louise close the loop on the Canadian side, with stay days at both.

The motorhome and the day-by-day plan come from CanaDream, and the hire is priced live per vehicle rather than per person; campsites, fuel, ferries, park fees and activities are all extra, with insurance options priced at booking. Eighteen days with stay days at every major stop is a proper schedule, and this is the shorter of the two cross-border Rockies routes in the range, leaving out Jasper and the Icefields Parkway in favour of more time in the parks it does include. The Going-to-the-Sun Road has vehicle length and width limits that rule out most motorhomes on the central section, so a shuttle is the answer there. Logan Pass often does not open until late June, and the Yellowstone campsites book out months ahead.