We like traveling by car and have done numerous road trips in our Subaru, including a couple of cross-country trips from the San Francisco Bay Area to New York City and back. Some may think that flying is more convenient, and we don’t argue with that. For us, it’s more of a personal choice and convenience to get all the stuff you want that fits into your car coupled with the ability to explore interesting sights in less-visited states. While on a road trip, you have the luxury to stop anywhere you like and explore small towns and nature.
This summer, we decided to go north from Reno/Tahoe, exploring our favorite place, Glacier Park, and then drive to Canada to visit Banff and Jasper National Parks. Those parks are some of the most popular, and July is high season, so getting any last-minute reservation requires quite a lot of planning.
Glacier Park
There are two most popular roads in the park, and now both require vehicle reservations – Going-to-the-Sun Road and Many Glacier Road. The reservations for the roads are usually released at 7 pm MDT the day before your trip. You need to log in to recreation.gov to get them, and that requires an internet connection which you don’t have in most parts of the park, so you need to be at least near the visitor center or maybe be in possession of Starlink. If you booked any activities or campgrounds which are west of Logan Pass you don’t need a vehicle reservation.
For any other campgrounds or activities east of Logan Pass (Saint Mary’s, Many Glacier, etc.), you will be asked to drive around the park along HWY2.
How hard is it to get last-minute reservations in popular campgrounds like Many Glacier? Not that hard it turns out. If you constantly monitor cancellations, there are good chances you can get a night at the campground. It might not be very convenient if you plan to sleep in a tent as you need to pack everything and move in the morning, but if you sleep in the car or in a van it’s a viable option to explore that area and a good alternative to a vehicle reservation for Many Glacier Road.
You can also set up alerts for the availability of a campground. Getting a last-minute reservation to Saint Mary’s campground is even much easier, and it’s not that far from Many Glacier Road.
When passing by Lake Sherburne, watch for black bears on the hill across the lake – there is a good chance you’ll see one or two – they are always there.
Here are a couple of must-do hikes that are, of course, very popular and crowded but definitely worth it!
Iceberg Lake
Iceberg Lake trail is a 9.6-mile hike (out and back), approximately 1,500 feet- elevation gain, and quite crowded. The parking lot is very small, so you need to come early – we couldn’t find a space at approximately 8:30 a.m. and had to park nearby. The lake is beautiful with the icebergs floating in the blue waters even in July.
It was very refreshing to plunge into the cold water (approximately 36°F) after 5 miles of hiking on a hot summer day. There are nice Ptarmigan Falls to stop by on the way to the lake.
Grinnell Glacier and Upper Grinnell Lake
It is another 10-mile hike with approximately 2,000 feet-elevation-gain. The trail can get very crowded but has stunning views of the blue waters of Lower Grinnell Lake, the rock walls of the Continental Divide, and of course Grinnell Glacier. If you venture to the left of the trail near the lake and cross Grinnell Creek, which feeds Lower Grinnell Lake, you can probably get closer to the foot of the glacier, although the message board there advises you not to.
You can skip the first part of the hike and take a boat across Lake Josephine.
If you’re visiting the park in high season, come very early to get a parking spot. It’s better to be there before 7 a.m., and it’s actually much nicer to hike in the cool morning. The higher part of the trail is usually closed until the end of July because of snow hazards. If you visit earlier in the season, you may not be able to get to the glacier. If you come during the shoulder season (after Labor Day), the road, although no longer requiring a reservation, will be closed for the season.
A nice feature of this hike is the small falls sprinkling right above the trail–so be ready to get wet!
There are many other trails to explore in Glacier Park (Highline trail, Garden Wall trail, Hidden Lake, Avalanche Lake etc.), but this topic deserves a separate post.
Another tip is that Going-to-the-Sun Road doesn’t require a reservation if you drive from the east to the west. Keep in mind that if you’re staying on the park’s east side, you won’t be allowed to drive back from the west to the east without a vehicle reservation.
We spent two nights in campgrounds and, for the third night, decided to go backpacking. Initially, we planned to hike to Gunsight Lake to get near the foot of Jackson Glacier. Alltrails reviews were saying the trail is overgrown with lots of bugs, so we opted out to hike to Elizabeth Lake instead, along the Belly River Trail.
This part is very remote, and the trailhead is just near the Canadian border, which was very convenient for us as our next stop was Banff. You can literally see the border station from the parking lot. The trail is pretty secluded and mostly used by backpackers and a few CDT through hikers.
The backpacking experience in Glacier Park was quite different from the Sierra. In Glacier, you need to reserve the campsite, and there are approximately six near the Elizabeth Lake foot. Each campsite is marked, and there is a food area with bear boxes – you need to visit it first and store all the food and other scented stuff in there before pitching the tent.
You are allowed to eat and brush your teeth only in the food area to prevent grizzly bears from visiting campsites. You are even encouraged to spill the water after cleaning your dishes around that area, so the curious bears would visit the food areas instead of the campsites.
We haven’t seen any grizzly bears this time but we saw a group of hikers who noticed one near Cosley Lake. After the night near the lake, we hiked out to the parking lot by noon, threw our packs into the van, and drove to the border.
There were a couple of cars in front of us, and going into Canada was very smooth and fast. Besides usual customs questions, we were asked if we had bear spray, which we did, but we weren’t asked to show it (we have heard it is quite common as Canada has lower requirements for the percentage of capsaicin allowed in bear spray).
Banff and Jasper National Parks
We came to Canada on July 19. About a week before our vacation started (July 13), we were able to get a couple of nights in Jasper (Wapiti campground) as well as a night in Banff on July 21 (Banff – Lake Louise campground). For the first two nights, we were planning to do some wild camping. In Alberta, you will need to get a special pass to be able to camp on the Crown Land. We initially thought we would get that pass when we entered Alberta, but as time passed, we decided that we didn’t want to deal with uncertainty.
We were monitoring the Parks Canada website to check if there were any available spots on any of the Banff campgrounds. Finally, we scored a couple of nights in Tunnel Mountain Village I and II (yes, two nights in two different although nearby campgrounds).
As many of you know, there are two iconic lakes in Banff everyone wants to visit: Lake Louise and Lake Moraine. Now both of them require shuttle reservations, and these reservations should be made at 7 a.m. MDT two days before your trip. These reservations are selling out pretty fast–you need to literally be ready to click through very quickly to get the desired time slot. After researching the website, you might think you have to shuttle to both lakes, but in fact, there is a large parking lot you can get into by your car or even RV near Lake Louise! You just need to get there quite early, by 7 a.m. The daily fee for the parking is $36 (as of July 2024).
As for Moraine Lake, unless you have any lodge reservations, you need to reserve the shuttle. You can also visit both lakes at the same time –there is a lake connector shuttle, but only if you have an original shuttle reservation for one of them. Basically, if you come to Lake Louise by car, you won’t be allowed on the lake connector shuttle. And you can bring your inflatable paddle board into the shuttle! It’s actually really nice to paddle the lake, and you don’t need to spend $160 to rent one.
If you like fishing and thinking of getting a couple of trouts for dinner, Banff waters are catch-and-release only.
On our first day, we planned to visit Lake Minnewanka and maybe hike around. This lake is frequented by grizzly bears, perhaps because of the berries growing along the lake, so starting July 10, a minimum of four people is required to hike near the lake, and they must hike in tight groups. As there were only two of us, we had to find some other options.
We went to the Bourgeau Lake Trail instead. It has limited parking, although we were able to get a spot at approximately 8:30 am. Because of the small parking lot, the trail is not that crowded and goes through the forest, which is really nice on hot summer days. The trail is nine miles (out and back) with approximately 3,000 feet elevation gain.
After the lake, you can hike further to Harvey Pass (approximately three more miles) and even to Bourgeau Mountain. The trail to the pass is beautiful with several pristine lakes along the trail and alpine meadows full of wildflowers. It’s somewhat overlooked in the guidebooks but worth hiking!
The second day we went to Lake Louise and parked near the lake by 7 a.m. There are several nice trails near the lake, and you can do many of them in one day. We first went to the Plain of Six Glacier trail all the way to the Glacier viewpoint. From there, you can see the Lefroy and Victoria glaciers. After a short break, we went back and took the Highline Trail to the ridge above Lake Agnes and to Devil’s Thumb. Some parts of the trails were steep and slippery moraine sections–poles were very handy! The view from the top is spectacular.
After Devil’s Thumb, we hiked down to Lake Agnes–a nice spot to plunge in and refresh! There are two tea houses on the trails near Lake Louise: one at Lake Agnes and another on the way to the glacier viewpoint, although they can be very crowded in the afternoon.
The next day we had an approximately 7 a.m. shuttle reservation to Lake Moraine, so we got to the parking lot pretty early. There is an even earlier start for Lake Moraine, called Alpine start, which is approximately 4:30 a.m. So if you want to watch the sunrise, that is the time to get there. If you want to paddle the lake, you can bring your own inflatable board. Don’t forget that each time you launch your board in Banff, you need to fill out the form (available in Park’s visitor center) and drop it into the box near the launching site. If you want to paddle and then hike, there is no place to keep your board–we had just hid it in the forest near the trailhead to Eiffel Lake.
The day we explored Moraine Lake, the smoke from nearby wildfires got into the park, and it was pretty hazy in the afternoon. Our next night was supposed to be in Jasper National Park on July 22. We looked into air quality websites and realized that the air was even worse north of Banff. We canceled our reservation in Jasper and decided to drive west to British Columbia. And that was a wise decision to make. The next morning we heard that the whole Jasper National Park was under mandatory evacuation that night because of a new wildfire spreading at the park’s edge.
As we were driving through BC, the smoke was pretty heavy until approximately 400 miles from the BC/Alberta border. The part of Highway 1 to Vancouver was closed south of Cache Creek because of a wildfire, so we took Highway 97 to Whistler, and at approximately 10 p.m. we found a spot at a very small campground in Marble Canyon Provincial Park. At about 1 am we were woken up by the noise outside; the camp host knocked on our door and warned that we have to evacuate now and to drive at least another 40-50 minutes to the west.
We packed quickly, left, and eventually stopped on a pullout for the rest of the night. That was a pretty rough night. The following days we heard the sad news about the destructive wildfire raging through Jasper National Park and the historical town of Jasper.
British Columbia
The next few days we spent in British Columbia. Here are several great hikes to explore in the Whistler area.
- Joffre Lakes Provincial Park: This is a beautiful and relatively short trail (approximately six miles) that requires a day-use permit which is very hard to get. The park is now closed because of the road closure due to a landslide
- Garibaldi Provincial Park: This is a nice 11-mile trail with approximately 3,200 feet elevation gain through the forest with lots of shades. This one also requires a day-use pass or backpacking permit. From the shore of this turquoise lake, you can see the Sphinx glacier. There are a few campsites near the lake with wind shelters and very funny-looking stations to hang the food.
- Wedgemount Trail: Approximately a 10-mile trail, which can lead you to Wedgemount Lake and Tupper Lake fed by Wedgemount Glacier. You can find more info about this hike here .
- Crater Rim and Fairside Loop Trail: A short but beautiful hike through the forest, tonnes of huckleberry and blueberry!
On our last day in Canada, we strolled a bit through Stanley Park in Vancouver and then drove to the border crossing line. We have chosen the station near Peace Arch. It was Friday afternoon, so there were quite a lot of cars getting into the US from Canada. That border crossing experience was far from smooth. If you drive a van or RV, be prepared to be asked for a secondary inspection. And that is mostly because vans/RVs are equipped with the fridge, and it is very likely you have some food in there.
The customs personnel asked if we had any vegetables, gave us an orange paper slip to place on the windshield, and showed the directions to the secondary inspection. We parked our van and were asked to leave the keys inside and proceed to the building nearby. There we waited to be called and had to answer a series of questions by the agricultural inspector. Then we waited again until he would check the van, and after that, we were released. Not the most pleasant experience, so keep that in mind!
After crossing the border, it took us a couple of days to get back home as we were just stopping at our favorite vista points. If you happen to drive around Mount Adams, be extra careful—the roads there can be quite rough with lots of bumps and potholes.
Wildfires couldn’t dampen the spirit of adventure on this road trip! It was a thrilling ride filled with unexpected turns and breathtaking discoveries. This journey proved that spontaneous plans can lead to the most unforgettable experiences. So, ditch the year-long itineraries! Pack your bags, hit the road, and let the open road be your guide. Every mile is a new chapter waiting to be written.
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