CALGARY · ALBERTA · CANADA
Prairie city, glacier lakes, dinosaur ground.
A frontier city between two landscapes. Drive 90 minutes west and the Rockies start. Drive 90 minutes east and the badlands open up. Day trips, glacier walks, Stampede, dinosaurs and the Icefields Parkway in between.
Only from here
Three things you can only do from Calgary.
City tours and food walks exist in every prairie capital. These three don’t. The colour of the lakes, the ice you stand on, the ground the dinosaurs come out of. Each one is specific to this stretch of Alberta. Build the trip around them.
The famous turquoise
Lake Louise & The Colour Of Rock Flour
The lake reads turquoise because Victoria Glacier grinds bedrock into silt fine enough to stay suspended in meltwater. The particles scatter blue and green light and absorb the rest. Drive 90 minutes west from Calgary and you stand in front of it. Canoes on the surface, the Fairmont chateau behind, peaks the colour of slate above.
- 1 Lake Louise, Moraine Lake, Banff Tour from Calgary/Canmore/Banff
- 2 Lake Louise Moraine Lake Day Trip from Banff Calgary Canmore
- 3 Calgary/Canmore: Banff National Park & Lake Louise Day Trip
On the ice
Walk On A 10,000-Year-Old Glacier
The Athabasca Glacier is the easiest place on earth to walk onto a major valley glacier without ropes or a guided crevasse course. Snocoach buses with five-foot tyres drive you onto the surface, then you step off and stand on ice that fell as snow before the pyramids. The Icefields Parkway gets you there.
- 1 Banff: Columbia Icefield, Skywalk, Parkway, Bow & Peyto Lake
- 2 Columbia Icefield Tour with Glacier Skywalk from Calgary
- 3 Columbia Icefield Glacier Adventure Day Tour from Calgary/ Banff
Eastward
Where Dinosaurs Walk Out Of The Ground
Ninety minutes east of Calgary the prairie collapses into the badlands. Hoodoos, striped canyon walls, fossils eroding out of the cliffs every spring melt. The Royal Tyrrell Museum holds the most complete dinosaur collection on earth. The land between the city and the museum has been quietly turning up new species for a hundred years.
- 1 Day of Dinosaurs and Hoodoos From Calgary to the Badlands
- 2 Day of Dinosaurs & Hoodoos from Calgary to Drumheller Badlands
- 3 Calgary to Royal Museum | Drumheller – PRIVATE TOUR
If you only have one day
The Banff day everyone takes from Calgary.
If your trip only spares one day for the Rockies, this is the one. The pickup is in Calgary, the day is in Banff, the photos are at Lake Louise.
The classics
Calgary’s Most Popular Trips
Lake Louise, Moraine Lake, Banff, Drumheller. The day trips most travellers come to Calgary to take.
From the city, in any direction
Pick which way out of Calgary.
West for the Rockies. East for the badlands. North on the Icefields Parkway for the glaciers. Same city, three completely different days.
By place
Pick a place around Calgary.
Lake Louise for the famous turquoise water. Moraine Lake for the Ten Peaks. Banff for the alpine town. Drumheller for the badlands. Columbia Icefield for the glacier walk. Kananaskis for the wild stretch most travellers miss.
By trip type
Or pick how you want to spend the day.
A Banff day trip if you want the big sights. A walking tour if you want the city itself. Horseback in the foothills, glacier coach onto the Athabasca, museum afternoon in Drumheller, food and beer in Inglewood. The Rockies do not have to be the whole trip.
The drive north
Along the Icefields Parkway.
Two hundred and thirty-two kilometres of glaciers, hanging valleys and lakes the colour of antifreeze, Lake Louise to Jasper. Most travellers run it in a single day out of Calgary. Here is what you stop for, in the order you reach it.
Past Lake Louise
The lake with the Ten Peaks behind it.
Moraine sits fourteen kilometres past Lake Louise, walled in by the Valley of the Ten Peaks. The shuttle is the only way in during peak months. If we had to pick three Moraine trips, these are the ones we’d book.
The quiet Rockies
Kananaskis Country.
Forty-five minutes from Calgary and the busloads have not arrived. Same range, same peaks, fewer cars in the lay-bys. Our three favourites for travellers who want the Rockies without the queue.
The city itself
Days that never leave Calgary.
Stephen Avenue, the Bow River pathway, Inglewood, the Saddledome, the Peace Bridge. Three city walks and rides we’d recommend before anyone disappears west into the mountains.
When sitting on a bus won’t cut it
The active days.
Horseback in the foothills, white-water on the Kananaskis, cycling along the Bow, bike loops through Inglewood. The other side of Calgary, for travellers who want to be outside of the coach.
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