Canada national parks family holiday
Minimum age 9.
Description of Canada national parks family holiday
This Canadian family holiday is a twelve day adventure through some of Canada’s most spectacular national parks. Travelling in a guided, small group of like minded families, we start in Calgary and finish in Vancouver, with many great beauty spots to discover en route. And outdoor adventures too of course.
The first is world renowned Banff National Park, where we spend four nights camping at Lake Louise. The park is a place to hike on extraordinary mountain trails, soak in hot springs, take a gondola ride up to the peaks and seek out wildlife. Yoho National Park is less well known but similarly awesome, its name, 'Yoho', being derived from the native word for 'awe'. If you go on a white water rafting down the Kicking Horse River and you will see why.
On day six we head over the iconic Icefields Parkway through the heart of the Rockies, taking in the massive glaciers and cliffs, before arriving at Jasper National Park, in Alberta’s Rocky Mountains. We camp here for two nights, giving plenty of time to enjoy optional adventures such as mountain biking, a cable car trip up Whistler Mountain or just taking in the magnificent glaciers.
We then have two days at Wells Gray Provincial Park in British Columbia, home to the Cariboo Mountains, a great place to go horse riding, before heading south to the outdoor adventure hub of Whistler. Followed by your final stop in Vancouver, a wonderful city to bring this family adventure to a close.
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Minimum age 9.
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Responsible Travel
Planet
We are committed to offering low impact tours that benefit both the places and communities we visit as well as our travellers. It is important for us all to be aware of the delicate balance that exists in the variety of natural wonders you will visit. National Parks and monuments, archaeological sites and other sensitive areas should and must be treated with respect.We have created a 'Travellers' Code of Conduct' to help prepare and inform our groups of the various positive or negative effects they could have on a destination. The code includes tips on everything from handling wildlife encounters to how you can help to conserve precious natural resources. Our tour leaders will explain this code of conduct during the first night’s orientation talk and encourage you to follow it throughout the tour.
This code includes following the ‘Leave No Trace’ ethic, this is an international campaign that is designed to help us minimise the impact on the National Parks and other wilderness areas that we visit. Some key guidelines we follow include keeping to existing trails, staying in official campgrounds and disposing of all waste responsibly and recycling whatever we can.
People
We are proud supporters of Bay Area Wilderness Training (www.bawt.org) a charity based in Oakland California which works to connect disadvantaged children in the local urban area with the great outdoors. Their work helps to provide these young people with life changing experiences which they canapply to everyday life. Everyone booking with Grand American Adventures has the option to donate £1/$1/€1 to support this well-deserved charity and we will match this donation.
Whenever possible, we use local accommodation and activity providers. We also shop locally for groceries, eat in small family-run restaurants and visit local shops whenever possible. This all brings economic benefit to the local communities that we visit.
We spend a significant amount of time at various National Parks on this tour, the included entrance fees help to preserve the status and upkeep of the park on a continued and sustainable basis. Interaction with National Park Rangers helps to preserve this role as an employment opportunity for local people and future generations.
Our tour leaders will educate travellers on how best to interact with the wildlife in the parks, for example advising people not to feed the animals to stop them becoming dependent on hand-outs from humans
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