Great Parks of the West

Sixteen nights by hire car in a grand circle out of Vancouver, touching six national parks and one that has not been declared yet. It is the fullest western itinerary the operator sells.

Harrison Hot Springs opens it, then the Coastal Mountains and Manning Provincial Park to the Okanagan, with a craft brewery at Summerland and an afternoon of wine touring. The proposed South Okanagan-Similkameen park sits at the northern tip of North America’s Great Basin Desert, which is the only true desert in Canada and nothing like most people’s idea of the country.

Revelstoke follows up the valley, with the Meadows in the Sky Parkway climbing above 1,800 metres into Mount Revelstoke National Park on a seasonal road. The Yellowhead then runs past Mount Robson, the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies at 3,954 metres, to Blue River, where two nights in a log cabin resort come with a river safari looking for the resident black bears.

Wells Gray follows, then Glacier and Kootenay, then Banff and Jasper, which supply the scenery most people book this part of the world for. Whistler closes the loop before the run down to Vancouver. Canadian Affair include the flights, the hire car, the hotels, the wine tour and the river safari, with fuel, insurance and meals separate. The price is per person. Six parks in sixteen nights sounds like a sprint and is not, because the circle means no backtracking and the driving days are shorter than the map suggests. The log cabin nights at Blue River are also a genuine change of register from a chain of mountain hotels, and the bear safari there is on water rather than from a road, which gives a better chance of seeing something.