Canada - Alberta
Alberta’s Banff
National Park & Nearby
Banff National Park is one of the most beautiful places in Canada, and attracts visitors from around the globe. It is known for its majestic mountains, beautiful lakes, and hiking trails. The park has a lot to offer for all kinds of visitors. Banff National Park is Canada’s oldest, established in 1885 to preserve the natural beauty of the Canadian Rockies.
Of the destinations below, Lake Louise and Moraine Lake both link to their own pages, complete with images, history, information on sights, trails, activities, and a video. Other destinations link directly to their videos - eventually to have informative pages of their own.
In Canada’s Rocky Mountains, we hike Johnston Canyon - the most popular hiking trail in Banff National Park. The trail takes us through a narrow gorge with catwalks and waterfalls with many spectacular views. The journey up is experienced in the morning with much of the creek in the shade. The trek back is just before noon as the sun was lighting up the creek with beautiful shades of green.
Watch the Video: In the Canadian Rocky Mountains, we visit the Icefields Parkway in Banff National Park - one of the most scenic highways in the world. From iconic Lake Louise and Moraine Lake on the parkway’s doorstep, we travel north to the Columbia Icefields, following jagged mountains, numerous waterfalls, more glaciers than you can count, and vast sweeping valleys, featuring the most amazing panoramic viewpoints.
Explore emerald green Lake Louise in Banff National Park, Rocky Mountains of Alberta. Enjoy one of the most famous vistas in the world on a perfect summer morning, along scenic shore to the where the glacial meltwater rushes down the mountain into a gentle delta feeding the lake. Complete with some history, information on popular trails, other sights in the area, and logistics if you plan to visit.
Explore beautiful blue Moraine Lake in the Banff National Park, Alberta. Also one of the most famous vistas in the world, captured on a perfect summer morning, strolling along the scenic shore to the where the glacial meltwater rushes down the mountain feeding the lake. Appreciate its history, information on popular trails, and logistics if you plan to visit.
Watch the Video: Bow Lake along the Icefields Parkway in Banff National Park, Alberta. We enjoy this beautiful lake surrounded by jagged mountains, Crowfoot Glacier and Bow Glacier, and we see Bow Glacier Falls. The shoreline is picturesque with gentle streams, wooden bridges and pathways - allowing a relaxing, peaceful stroll through this tranquility of nature. Also introduced is Num-Ti-Jah Lodge and a short story of mountain guide Jimmy Simpson.
Watch the Video: In Canada’s Rocky Mountains, we ride the Banff Gondola up Sulphur Mountain, enjoying one of its best panoramic views on a beautiful spring day. We follow a boardwalk along top of the mountain ridge to Sanson’s Peak, with a small stone hut housing a weather station, enjoying more amazing views along the way.
Watch the Video: An exhilarating helicopter flight into the Canadian Rocky Mountains on a clear sunny day from Canmore Alberta. Fly with cockpit view to Mt Assiniboine on the continental divide, over its hanging glaciers and Marvel Lake, to a remote touch-down location with spectacular vistas. Flight returns over the Spray Lakes Reservoir with open-window video for great clarity.
Watch the Video: We venture into the Canadian Rockies, driving through majestic mountain ranges stopping at Upper Kananaskis Lake & Lower Kananaskis Lake. Beautiful Kananaskis Country region just west of Calgary, Alberta, contains numerous parks to discover. It is off the heavy tourist path and usually by-passed by tour buses heading straight for world-renowned Banff National Park.
Watch the Video: We venture to Kootenay National Park, British Columbia, to picturesque Marble Canyon, exploring its rocky walled trail and bridges over the roaring creek below. Close to the boarder of Alberta, we also admire the beautiful Vista Lake Viewpoint, and the Continental Divide. Evidence of past forest fires are observed at both the Continental Divide and Marble Canyon.
Alberta’s Jasper
National Park & Nearby
Jasper National Park is the largest national park in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, with impressive peaks, spectacular lakes, wilderness trails, glaciers, and waterfalls. It has fewer visitors compared to its southern Banff Park neighbor, but is equally stunning in its sights. The scenic Icefields Parkway, one of the most beautiful drives in the world, begins in Banff National Park just north of Lake Louise and runs all the way up to Jasper townsite.
Watch the Video: Visit the Icefields Parkway in Jasper National Park - one of the most scenic highways in the world. From the Columbia Icefield, we travel north to the town of Jasper, following jagged mountains, numerous waterfalls, glaciers, and vast sweeping valleys, featuring amazing panoramic viewpoints. Learn the significance of the 3-way continental divide.
Watch the Video: Visit the top sights near Jasper - one of the most stunning destinations in the world in the largest national park in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Of the sights we see near Jasper, the furthest away is 48 KM, with quite a few being very close to town.
Watch the Video: We venture into the Canadian Rockies, to the Athabasca Falls along the Icefields Parkway in Jasper National Park, Alberta. We enjoy this thundering waterfall up close and on bridges overlooking the falls and the gorge. We enjoy the picturesque Athabasca River around Jasper and its origination in the Columbia Icefields.
Watch the Video: We drive up the scenic Icefields Parkway through majestic mountain ranges to the Columbia Icefield Skywalk - a glass-floored observation platform with spectacular views of the Sunwapta Valley. As we drive through Banff National Park into Jasper National Park, we make some stops along the way, to admire the picturesque landscape on one of the most scenic highways in the world .
Watch the Video: We visit fabulous Maligne Lake with a Cruise to Spirit Island in Jasper National Park. Its fascinating history includes a Mary Schaffer story, the legend of Spirit Island, and a stop at Medicine Lake with its disappearing water. See one of the most photographed spots in the Canadian Rockies, and appreciate its history to bring this location to life.
Watch the Video: See spectacular Maligne Canyon in Jasper National Park, possibly one of the most beautiful slot canyons in the world. Experience its highest water flow in 40 years as it pounds its way through the rocky gorge. We learn about its hiking trails and the fascinating geology of the Maligne River.
Watch the Video: We visit spectacular Crescent Falls in the foothills of Alberta to experience its twin waterfalls on the Bighorn River. Along the David Thompson highway, we admire the beautiful panoramic vistas with a couple brief stops: Kootenay Plains Ecological Reserve, and Allstones Lake trail staging area overlooking Abraham Lake.
Watch the Video: Ride the Jasper SkyTram up Whistlers Mountain - a major sight in Jasper National Park. Enjoy one of the best panoramic views on a beautiful fall day, and also see what it is like after a summer snowfall on the mountain.
Badlands of Alberta
Dinosaurs roamed and died in this region, to be exposed millions of years later in this fascinating landscape. The Great Canadian Dinosaur Rush began in today's Dinosaur Provincial Park, where you can walk trails through other-worldly formations where the skeletons were first found. Drumheller has its own vast valleys with trails, hoodoos, and an amazing museum dedicated to dinosaur skeletons. Lesser-known Writing-On-Stone along the Milk River in the south is easy to miss and has a most entertaining trail through a large amount of unique hoodoo rock formations.
Watch the Video: We hike the Hoodoo Trail in the fabulous Writing-On-Stone Provincial Park. This UNESCO World Heritage Site is host to the largest concentration of native rock art on the North American Plains. Cut into the flat prairie landscape, this unexpected green river valley with sandstone cliffs and unusual badlands rock formations, has been a favorite location for First Nation’s people for thousands of years.
Watch the Video: Dinosaur Provincial Park is one of the richest locations for dinosaur fossils in the world. We hike the Badlands Trail through this eerie environment, while providing an overview of its geological history including the presence of dinosaurs. We also check out the Trail of the Fossil Hunters and present the start of the Great Canadian Dinosaur Rush. This UNESCO World Heritage site is great to explore.
Watch the Video: We visit my favorite sites around the badlands of Drumheller, a terrain dating back 100 million years when dinosaurs roamed this area. We get up-close to skeletons in the Royal Tyrrell Museum, including Tyrannosaurus Rex, Gorgasaurus, Stegoceras, Centrosaurus – most excavated from Dinosaur Provincial Park. Also visit the Hoodoo Trail, Horse Thief Canyon, and hike to eerie formations at Horseshoe Canyon.