Our first glimpse of the Rockies is from a quintessential Albertan vehicle, a large, four wheel drive pick-up truck, looking mostly new but with a long crack in the bottom of the windscreen and a few other chips dotted around it. In the UK, such a windscreen would fail a MOT test of road worthiness, but here everybody - and I mean everybody - drives with one. But I am digressing. The Rockies are staggeringly impressive. A person that has a tendency to overuse hyperbolic descriptions and exalted adjectives (like your reporter) will find themselves regretting earlier exclamations of wonder, because those mountains are really a Something Else: massive, ...  Read the complete review

Banff National Park is easily accessed from Calgary, and we visited in a motorhome as part of a holiday touring the Rockies and British Columbia. The town of Banff is certainly a relatively touristy town, but these things are purely relative, and there is plenty of wilderness all around. Parking for motorhomes in the town itself is a bit tricky but there is ample space on the edge of town, with just a short walk to the friendly and informative tourist information centre, who were happy to give advice about local facilities and sell us some bells to warn the bears that we were around. Banff made a great introduction to the Rockies for us, we ...  Read the complete review

I have visited Banff National Park on two occasions in the past few years, and it is a trip I highly recommend. Get yourself a hire car from Edmonton or Calgary and do the trip between Jasper and Banff - it is fantastic. Both parks have plenty to do, and is really an independent traveller's dream. Banff National Park is possibly the more tourist friendly of the two, Banff town actually being quite large compared to Jasper which is fairly compact. In Banff National Park, is the famous Lake Louise with nearly as famous Chateau Hotel (please see my review of that). This is picture postcard perfect, and as such suffers from hoards and hoards of tourists, most of ...  Read the complete review

Have you ever liked the idea of putting on the sunglasses jumping into the convertible and driving for miles in the hot summer sun surrounded by some of the most stunning scenery in the World? Yes? then Banff National Park is for you, read on! Banff is usually associated with skiing and winter holidays, people sometimes overlook the fact that Banff also serves as a fantastic summer destination. There is only one way to explore this wonderful part of the world and that is by car (preferably open top). The roads are long straight and quiet so much so that driving actually becomes an enjoyable experience. There are many points of ...  Read the complete review