West coast Canada - but not too keen on hours of driving...

[Oatcat]

I've been looking at West coast trips to Canada for next year. Travel companies seem to offer itineraries that cover Vancouver Island and then onto Lake Louise and Banff.

Basically id like to:
Spend time outside
Bike riding
Kayaking
See a bear/ eagle/ moose or whatever wildlife.
Make amazing family memories

I'm not too keen on the options that involve several days of 6 hours driving. I've looked and you can fly reasonably from Vancouver to Calgary.

What itineraries have you done? Should I just go ahead and do the standard Trail finders or Stubborn Mule itinerary?

The other options I was thinking of was a few days Vancouver island, then Rocky Mountaineer, a day or too and then home.

We flew up to Calgary from Vancouver and drove back. If we did it again, we’d fly both ways.

We were the same and flew to Calgary, bus to Banff and did days out from there. Saw bears, elk, eagles etc. Then flew Calgary to Victoria and went Whale watching. Ferry to Vancouver for a few days and flew back from there.

Never saw a moose though.

We were the same as didn't want to spend holiday in a car and also wanted to spend some time exploring each place We did:

• 2 days Calgary
• coach to Banff for 4 days - did wildlife tour, kayaking, float raft, cowboy lunch. Vintage car tour.
• private transfer to Lake Louise - 2 days - more kayaking, hiking, lots of food!
• private transfer back to Calgary.

Flight to calgary, transfer to Banff. One way coach tour to jasper. Train jasper to vancouver. It was severely delayed whuch is normal in north America. Flew out of vancouver.

I'd go to Canmore and do stuff from there then transfer to Vancouver or Victoria. It's a long drive and the train can take ages...

On my honeymoon I did Toronto, flew to Calgary and then stayed Banff a couple of nights, got the rocky mountaineer gold leaf to Vancouver and then a few nights there.

Toronto I was a bit meh
banff was lovely
rocky mountaineer was great - you don’t say if you have kids but I would say i didn’t see any. Gold leaf was main couple celebrating something ‘big’. It wasn’t cheap when I did it but it is now quite eye wateringly expensive.

loved Vancouver and Vancouver island. We stayed in Vancouver and got a seaplane to Vancouver island.

You need to see:

Banff
Lake Louise
Whistler
Vancouver
Vancouver Island

We’ve done a couple of trips.
First one - flew to Vancouver, a couple of days there then ferry to Ninamo on Vancouver Island. Drove up the east side of the island to Campbell River, then by boat to Sonora Resort for a few days. Back to Campbell River then drove to Tofino - surfing, bear watching, seaplane trip. Then back to Victoria where we did wineries and whale watching. Ferry from Victoria back to Vancouver. Not too much driving and spent a few days in each place we stopped.
second trip. Back to Vancouver Island and spent time at Knight Inlet Lodge for grizzly bears etc. Then back to the mainland and drove to Calgary over two weeks, stopping at Whistler - cycling, walking, ski lift rides - Kelowna, - a cycling tour of the wineries - YoHo national Park and Lake Moraine - stayed at the lodge, so we had the lake to ourselves in the evening when the last shuttle bus left. Drove to Calgary and flew back to Vancouver to pick up BA flight home.
Although there was some driving, it was never all that far, and we stayed at each stop for a few days, so it didn’t feel like a huge road trip.

We did this, with a couple of days in calgary first!;