Arriving in Vancouver, you’ll make your own way to the hotel before meeting your Travel Director and fellow travelers this afternoon. If you’re here early, perhaps follow the waterfront through Coal Harbor, where yacht masts line the marina and seaplanes skim across Burrard Inlet before lifting towards the North Shore mountains. Along the seawall, the harbor stretches beside you with downtown at your back and the mountains across the water.
With your Travel Director, you’ll begin in Gastown, where red-brick paving and heritage buildings lead to the Steam Clock, its whistle cutting through a curl of steam on Water Street. In Stanley Park, 400 hectares of West Coast rainforest stretch beyond the city streets, with towering old-growth trees and deep green foliage overhead. Leaving Vancouver, board the ferry across the Strait of Georgia to Vancouver Island, watching wooded shorelines and small islands slip by, perhaps with a seal breaking the surface along the way. You’ll arrive in Victoria, with tomorrow set aside to explore the city in more depth.
After breakfast at Butchart Gardens, you can follow winding paths through carefully planted beds and descend into the Sunken Garden, where flowers and greenery now cover the walls of a former limestone quarry. Back in Victoria, your Travel Director introduces Canada’s oldest Chinatown, the grand Fairmont Empress and the stone facades and copper domes of the Parliament Buildings. The afternoon is yours, perhaps browse Government Street before following the rich scent of roasted coffee into a cafe, or spend a few hours among the collections of the Royal BC Museum. Alternatively, choose today’s Optional Experience and head out for a whale watching tour, scanning the open water for the sweep of a dorsal fin or the sudden lift of a tail above the waves.
Leaving Victoria, you’ll board the ferry back to the mainland, perhaps catching sight of dolphins cutting through the open water as the coast recedes behind you. Heading inland through British Columbia, you’ll watch dense forest crowd the roadside before broad valleys open beyond the road and mountain ridges line the horizon. In Sun Peaks, wander through the pedestrian village beneath gabled roofs, colorful façades and timber balconies, with dark forest climbing behind the rooftops to ridgelines etched against the sky.
From Sun Peaks, you’ll head deeper into the Rockies towards Mount Robson, traveling beneath layers of gray rock, snowfields and ice above the Fraser River valley. At the Mount Robson Visitor Center, you'll step out and gaze up at the Canadian Rockies’ highest peak, its summit reaching 3,954 meters. Continue into Jasper National Park, following the road through glacially carved valleys and alongside wild rivers before settling in for the night among the conifers.
With a full day in Jasper National Park, choose how close you want to get to its rivers and lakes through today’s Optional Experiences. On the Athabasca River, settle into the raft as the current tugs you downstream, water brushing the sides while you scan the banks for wildlife. Or join a seasonal cruise across Maligne Lake, where blue-green glacial water glints beneath snow-and-ice-capped mountains. The boat carries you towards Spirit Island, 14 kilometers up the lake, where you can step ashore beside the cold water with dark spruce and pale rock all around.
South along the Icefields Parkway, you’ll wind between sheer rock faces, turquoise lakes and glaciers spilling from the high icefields. At the Columbia Icefield, board a massive Ice Explorer and rumble onto Athabasca Glacier, then step onto ancient ice, cold and rough beneath your boots. Fill your bottle with glacier meltwater and taste its icy chill before continuing to Lake Louise, where turquoise water gleams against dark forest and bare mountain rock. By evening, you’ll arrive in Banff for the night.
If weather allows, begin the day with an Optional Experience helicopter flight above Banff, the low thrum of the helicopter around you as forested slopes, gray peaks and ribbons of snow fall away below. Back on the ground, the rest of the day is yours to spend as you choose. Join a MAKE TRAVEL MATTER® Experience Plant Medicine Walk with a First Nations Local Specialist, learning to recognize the plants growing around Cascade Ponds and how they have traditionally been used as medicine. Alternatively, end the evening with another Optional Experience, gliding up Sulfur Mountain on the Banff Gondola before dinner high above the Bow Valley, with six mountain ranges layered beyond the windows.
Leaving Banff, you’ll travel east towards Calgary, with the Rockies gradually falling away behind you as the road opens towards Alberta’s plains. You’ll be dropped off at Calgary Airport at approximately 11:30 am for your onward journey, so please keep this timing in mind when booking your flight.
