Trip 25 - West Canada

 10th May to 5th July 2026

Western Canada

A long time planning and indecision on this trip in these uncertain times. Originally our plan for this Spring was a trip to Japan, followed by China. China was taken off the list fairly quickly as summer temperatures would make it unpleasant and, in the end Japan was postponed for times when the world situation will hopefully be better. The several months of planning were therefore put into cold storage, to be resurrected later with a ready made plan.

We decided on Canada as its a place that's been on our visit list for a long time, is in a relatively safe part of the world and is relatively self sufficient in oil production, insulating it from world oil supply problems although not market pricing. We know its going to cost us a lot more than previously but, once we're there, we hopefully should not have problems travelling around.

Being the second largest country in the world we decided trying to explore everywhere was not an option, particularly as we want to be home in the UK for summer July, August and September to enjoy our usually warmer, sunnier climate with long daylight hours. We therefore decided on a western Canadian trip, British Columbia, Alberta, the Yukon and a bit of USA Alaska on this occasion, leaving eastern Canada for a future trip. Spring or Autumn look to be the best times to visit to avoid the cold of winter and heat and crowds in the summer, so May to early July seemed to fit our requirements nicely

Our planned route takes us from Vancouver, Vancouver Island and a flight to Whitehorse in the Yukon where we've book a Truck Camper. That will allow us access to remote parts further north, our most northerly planned destination being Tombstone NP on the Dempster Highway. That's the only road that crosses the Arctic circle, a temptation, but one that's a very long drive on a gravel road, so we decided against that, instead going for a taste of it by going part way. After visiting the old gold frontier town of Dawson City we want to head over the Top of the World Highway, if conditions allow, into Alaska, stopping at Chicken, another gold frontier town and Tok, before travelling back into Yukon to visit the outskirts of the amazing Kluane NP, a glacier and ice covered mountainous wilderness. There are no roads through it so we'll be limited to short day hikes into the edges to get a flavour. After retuning the camper to Whitehorse and staying a couple more days we'll fly to Calgary in Alberta to explore the Rockies and the Icefield Parkway between Banff and Jasper for a couple of weeks. There we're going to catch up with Richelle, who we met on our Sri Lanka and Maldives trip a couple of years ago. She's offered us a room in her house for the duration to come and go as we please, as well as offering to take us hiking on some days, so that's going to be amazing.

That's our nearly two month plan in a paragraph, which we hope will give a us a great insight into that part of the world, but even two months in that small part will allow to to only scratch the surface. There were many more places we would have liked to have gone, but we decided less is more and potentially leaves room for a further visit in the future 

Our flight home is booked for 4th July, arriving back in the UK on 5th.

The map below has place markers (in various colours to denote the month) showing the places we will stay at as we go with lines showing our route. Click on each place marker to see details.

Below are links to the blog posts we will make on the way. Click on each one to read where we've been, what we saw and what we did. Happy reading!

Here's a map of our route showing places we're visiting. To see it properly you'll need to click on the little square in the top right corner which will take it to full screen. It opens a new tab and you'll be able to browse round, zoom in and click on each marker to show more details.

Here's blog posts of our journey. Click the link to open a new page showing that entry:

10th May - Nothing yet