Few destinations rival the Rockies for sheer beauty. Angular, snowcapped peaks rise thousands of meters above sapphire lakes, pine forests, meadows, and glaciers. The Rocky Mountains cover portions of Alberta and British Columbia, but they’re far from the provinces’ only terrain. Alberta is largely prairies, and BC is permeated by several other mountain ranges, interior plateaus, and low-lying coastal areas. So poignant and prominent are the 65-million-year-old Rockies along the BC–Alberta border, however, that they’ve become a symbol for all of Canada west of Calgary.
Nature is the main event everywhere you go in the West: nearly every car on the road is mounted with skis, a kayak, or bikes (or all three). Some of North America’s first, best, and most-visited national parks are here, including Jasper and Banff and the country’s largest national park: the northern Wood Buffalo Park, a natural habitat for the threatened bison. Within these parks are thousands of kilometers of trails for hiking, biking, and cross-country skiing, and thousands of rivers for canoeing, kayaking, and rafting. The skiing and snowboarding in western Canada is epic, a fact widely advertised during the 1988 and 2010 Winter Olympics in Calgary and Vancouver/Whistler. But you can enjoy yourself without breaking a sweat: Those mountain views are just as gorgeous from a luxurious hot springs spa, while touring wineries or golfing, or from a table for two at the newest trend-setting restaurant in Calgary or a resort town. And just a few hours north is Edmonton, Alberta’s oil-boom-era capital, which has a lively arts scene and the distinction of being the northernmost city of a million-plus on the continent
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