Sorry for the delay… Well, where to begin? If you’ve settled on the Alberta Rockies and/or the coast, the only questions left are where to start, where to end, and what you want to see. You should send me an email and we can talk about the various things you might want to consider, but I’ll post a few things here just to take advantage of the opportunity to brag on my corner of the world a bit. One general consideration is that the months of July and August are significantly busier and more expensive, particularly in the National Parks. Lots of families travelling with campers and motor homes. Lots of rental motor homes full of Europeans and people from all points on the globe too. Banff National Park gets 5 million visits per year and a large percentage of that comes in the summer. (I worked there a couple of summers while in undergrad and in a week you could see cars with plates from all Canadian Provinces and about 40 States. Stay a little longer and you see all the States.) Also if you rent a car and are planing to cross the border at some point, you probably need to rent the car in the States. I had an unfortunate incident at the Maine New Brunswick border one time with a car I had rented in Boston. It seems they didn’t like the idea of a Canadian talking an American rental car into Canada, for fear that I may not bring it back, and they were not going to let me cross the border with it. (The rental company ended up giving me a Canadian car on the Canadian side for free because I had informed me that I couldn’t do this, so it all worked out in the end.) So you’re a fly fisherman? The Bow River runs right through Calgary and is one of the best fly fishing rivers in the world, and there are lots of great rivers nearby in the foothills. Here are a couple of web pages for outfitters that I picked at random, but there are many many more. http://www.albertaflyfish.com/bowriver.htm http://www.flyfish-canada.com/home.html http://www.members.shaw.ca/bowrivercalgary/ Calgary is a nice, clean pleasant city of 1 million and there some fin things to do you that you might be interested in, but let’s face it. When people come here the big attraction is the mountains (unless you’re interested in the Stampede, but that’s a whole other kind of holiday). You mentioned that you liked Glacier National Park? That’s about a 2.5 hour drive from here. There is a National Park on the Canadian side, Waterton, that’s spectacular too. http://www.discoveralberta.com/PhotoGallery/MountainsLakesRivers/ There are some other attractions in that area like Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump and the Frank Slide. http://www.head-smashed-in.com/ http://www.frankslide.com/info.html You can even go spelunking if that suits your fancy. http://www.caving.ab.ca/Caving/Default.htm Of course there are waterfalls and gorges, quaint small mountain towns. Too many to list here. Deckard mentioned a music festival. I’ve heard of that one, and there are a number of others too. Summer is festival season and there are lots to chose from. My favourite is the Camnore Folk Music Festival. www.canmorefolkfestival.com/ It’s really more of an acoustic rock/ world/folk music festival in an incredible setting. Very laid back and friendly. You’d meet many locals. There are other Jazz, Blues and Folk festivals too, and the Edmonton Fringe Festival if that interests you. www.fringe.alberta.com/ Email me and we can discuss it further. The possibilities are many. http://www.watertonpark.com/links.htm http://www.canadianrockies.net/
