Cowboy Trail and Icefields Parkway Loop - CanaDream

Eleven nights and 1,762 kilometres in a loop from Calgary in a motorhome, up the Cowboy Trail, through the Rockies and back along the foothills.

Highway 22 is the Cowboy Trail, 640 kilometres along the eastern edge of the Rockies through ranch country, where the foothills roll up to the mountains and the working ranches, rodeos and feed stores are the local economy rather than a performance for visitors.

Mayerthorpe comes first at the northern end with two or three nights, then Jasper, the largest of the mountain parks, and the Icefields Parkway south to Banff, 230 kilometres past more than a hundred glaciers with the Columbia Icefield at its midpoint. Waterton Lakes follows in the far south, where the mountains rise straight out of the prairie with no foothills in between, then Cardston before the run back to Calgary.

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. Twelve days with two or three nights at Mayerthorpe, Jasper, Banff and Waterton is a proper schedule rather than a drive. The season runs roughly June to September, though the Icefields Parkway is open year round with snow possible on it in any month. Bear rules apply in all three parks. The loop format avoids a one-way relocation fee, and the Cowboy Trail is the part nobody books a trip for and the part most people remember.