Hidden Gems of British Columbia & Banff National Park

Ten nights from Vancouver to Calgary, self-guided, through the British Columbia interior and into Banff, with the flights included.

The interior is the part that surprises people. Between the coast and the Rockies sits Osoyoos, the only desert town in Canada, with cactus and rattlesnakes, which is not the British Columbia the brochures sell.

Vancouver opens it for three nights, with Stanley Park, Granville Island, Gastown and the Capilano Suspension Bridge, and a Whistler day trip available. The Fraser Valley and Manning Park carry the route inland to Osoyoos for two nights, with the Nk’Mip Cultural Centre’s Indigenous exhibits. Kelowna follows for a night, with the Okanagan wineries and the old Kettle Valley railway trestles. Revelstoke comes next by Vernon, Kalamalka Lake and Salmon Arm, whose wooden wharf is the longest inland one in North America, with the Meadows in the Sky Parkway above the town. Banff closes it with three nights, for the gondola, the hot springs, Lake Louise and Moraine Lake, and the Icefields Parkway past Peyto Lake and the Columbia Icefield.

Flights out to Vancouver and home from Calgary, a checked bag each way, ten days of car hire and ten nights’ room-only accommodation across five stops are included; fuel, resort fees, most meals and the admissions are not. The price shown is per person sharing. June to September is the window, since the mountain parks are snowbound either side of it. Eleven days one way from the Pacific to the Rockies is a logical shape and avoids retracing the interior, and the three nights at Banff are enough for the Icefields Parkway to be driven properly rather than rushed.