• Rent a bike and spend a day riding the Lake Minnewanka loop. With picnic tables available, you can pack a picnic lunch, relax, and reconnect with nature.
• Spend the day at Johnson’s Canyon and hike the trail to seven waterfalls.
• Relax at the Upper Hot Springs, just south of town. These thermal springs draw bathers year-round to their warm, soothing waters. The complex includes a large outdoor pool, a wading pool, and an indoor spa. Several shops and a café are also available.
• Banff is full of corner stores where you can get fresh sweets, like fudge and chocolate. Hard candy, freshly brewed coffee, and cinnamon buns are also popular treats.
• Discover the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, which houses thousands of items, including journals, photographs, and artifacts relating to mountain climbing and exploration. The exhibits and log structures provide fascinating insight into the history of the region.
• Enjoy afternoon tea at the majestic Fairmont Banff Springs hotel. Gaze out upon breathtaking vistas of Bow Valley as you enjoy a refreshing cup of tea and delectable pastries in a relaxing atmosphere.

Don’t forget your sunglasses as we travel by car down the coast of California all the way to beautiful National Parks of the country and through the sunny Rockies. This type of vacation will allow you to take in the gorgeous views of the west coast while capturing the breathtaking sites of the great outdoors.

We begin our journey exploring the infamous Alcatraz Island off of Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. From there we will venture south towards the glamorous Los Angeles where we can scope out celebrities, visit Hollywood and shop along Rodeo Drive. After a few days cruising down the coast of California it’s time to drop off the car and travel via plane to our next vacation destination.

We arrive in Salt Lake City where we begin our next big adventure exploring the National Parks of America. We will search for wildlife at Grand Teton National Park in Jackson, then head to the world’s first national park, Yellowstone. We will spend the day discovering some of the parks highlights, including the Grand Canyon and the Fountain Paint Pots.

We then head to Jasper and Calgary to discover the “Jewel of the Rockies”. The is a lake located in a small glacial valley surrounded by snowcapped mountains. Why not visit Canada Olympic Park where we can experience the views of the Rocky Mountains while in Calgary. We will then enjoy some leisure time exploring our last two national parks, Jasper and Banff.

So get ready for a drive through the greatest National Parks in the world and along the magnificent west coast. Whatever comes your way, these driving vacations will surely be an unforgettable experience.

When you vacation in Yosemite National Park you are sure to encounter the rugged beauty of the California and the abundance of waterfalls.

When traveling to California for a National Park vacation here are some must-see sights of Yosemite:

Big Trees Tram Tour
Take the Big Trees Tram Tour for a fascinating excursion to the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias. Share the wonder of this ancient grove as you hear about the history these magnificent trees have seen. Stand in awe of the Grizzly Giant, the oldest tree in the grove, and its many neighbors that tower over 200 feet tall.

Ahwahnee Hotel
Visit the Ahwahnee Hotel, a National Historic Landmark and one of the most distinct resort hotels in North America. Known for its magnificent façade and architecture, the Ahwahnee was specifically designed to highlight its natural surroundings. The destination of queens and presidents alike, you’ll enjoy strolling through the lobby, having afternoon tea, or relaxing with a drink at the bar.

Ansel Adams Gallery
Spend time at the Ansel Adams Gallery. This photographer and environmentalist spent much of his life photographing the beauty of Yosemite. See his works, watch a film about the artist, or participate in a photography workshop or camera walk.

By far the most powerful symbol for Yosemite is Half Dome, the titanic half-egg of granite that presides over the entire valley from its eastern end, and whose sheer, 4700-foot-high face looks like it was sliced by a colossal knife.  For years, even its humped back was thought to be un-climbable – until, in 1875, one of the first settlers in the California region, a retired sailor named George Anderson, decided to tackle it.

He splashed tar over his trousers for adhesion and drove iron bolts into the slope every six feet to make a successful ascent.  On learning of this conquest, the naturalist John Muir “made haste to the Dome,” he wrote many years later in his book The Yosemite, to pull himself up by Anderson’s rope, “not only for the pleasure of climbing, but to see what I might learn.”  In 1919, the Sierra Club set cables on the route, and ever since it has been the signature climb in the park, despite its difficulty for average visitors.  (In 2007, a Japanese tourist slipped and fell 300 feet to his death).

In order to avoid the crowds, climb midweek or later in the day, when the path up Half Dome is all but deserted.  Reaching the top will leave you exhausted but exultant.  From the sheer lip, the sunshine pours like liquid gold into the valley below.  It’s no wonder that Muir raved so: “A grander surface and a grander standpoint… could hardly have been found in all the Sierra,” he recalled, as clouds “of pure pearl luster” swirled miraculously around the valley below his feet.

In a world now filled with high-tech marvels, pure nature can still amaze us – at least, the view from the rim of the Yosemite Valley never fails to elicit cries of glee.  This has always been the case: Back in 1869, a penniless Scottish-born wanderer named John Muir, who had walked 200 miles from San Francisco, first peered down into that yawning expanse and let his own show of delight: “I shouted and gesticulated in a wild burst of ecstasy,” Muir recalled later, upon beholding cliffs “all a-tremble with the thundering tones of falling water.”  With its sheer walls and granite towers “like the spires of Gothic cathedrals,” Yosemite impressed the young Muir deeply, and he swore to explore its every nook and cranny.

He ended up living in the remote valley for several years, surviving on his wits like a Victorian flower child, an experience that eventually led him to become the most famous nature writer of his era and America’s pioneer environmentalist.

Muir took up residence in a rustic log shack over a flowing river in Yosemite, working as a freelance mountain guide, and spending every spare minute climbing  granite mountains.  He would gaze in rapture at its waterfalls, make detailed studies of the delicate forest flowers and fill endless notebooks with observations that exploded with passion for nature.

Within a decade, the “wild man” John Muir was being recognized by American literati as a self-taught genius, and by the end of the century he had become the top spokesman for conservation in the U.S.: His many lyrical books on Yosemite were instrumental in establishing this remote wilderness as a National Park in 1890.

Today, the name of John Muir is emblazoned all over the state of California – it is given to high schools, state forests, hiking trails, parks, roads, even medical centers – but his greatest memorial remains the awe-inspiring landscape of Yosemite itself.

This summer we return to America’s National Parks. During our last National Parks vacation series we traveled to Yellowstone, home of Old Faithful Geyser.  On this trip we will explore the stunning natural wonders of Yosemite National Park.

Join us over the next few weeks as we discover one of the first wilderness parks in the United States.  Yosemite is known not only for its abundance of waterfalls, but also for the striking beauty of nearly vertical granite walls including the famous Half Dome.

Mount Rushmore is one of America’s most iconic vacation destinations.  In April 2009 our travel series took on a National Park vacation.  Here is a reader favorite from our US vacation posts:

The four presidential faces, carved 60-feet high in the granite of Mount Rushmore, comprise one of America’s most revered images.  But many visitors cannot help thinking of Cary Grant in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 thriller North by Northwest, where he and Eva Marie Saint clamber across the monolith pursued by Communist spies.  The shot was actually filmed in a Hollywood studio, but it convinced millions of people that they too could climb the patriotic monument.

This is not the case: Access to Mount Rushmore has been blocked by a high-security fence ever since the artist Gutzon Borglum died in 1941 and work on the giant sculpture ceased.  But according to his original plan, Borglum had intended that the public be able to reach his giant faces via a splendid stone staircase.  In the late 1930s, he even began work on a splendid vault buried within the rock for tourists to visit – called the Hall of Records, it was planned as a repository for the original Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution.  Worried that future generations might find Mount Rushmore as enigmatic, Borglum also wanted a museum to store information on the four presidents – Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt – and an explanation of “how the memorial was built and frankly, why.”

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The Teton Range rises sharply from the basin floor and includes eight peaks over 12,000 feet in elevation. This wall of giant mountain peaks runs for over 40 miles. Seven pristine lakes, created by glaciers, run along the base of the range.