Rockies by Road: Planning the Route

Canada had been on my bucket list for a long time, but getting the leave and the money together always seemed to be an issue. That was until the end of 2025, when the stars finally aligned.

What followed was just over two weeks of the best road tripping I have ever done, across some of the finest country I have ever seen. When it comes to the outdoors and landscapes, Canada truly is in a league of its own.

A trip like this does require some planning, though. In this first article I'll guide you through how we planned our route, with some hints and tips for planning your own.

Building the core route

Before you start picking places to visit, you need to make a few decisions about the shape of your trip:

• Will it be a point-to-point journey or a round trip?
• Are you limited by mileage restrictions on your campervan hire?
• Are you flying in and out of the same airport, or different ones?

Once you've taken these variables into consideration, you can start to set up a core route with your start and end points. For us we flew in and out of Vancouver and the camper van company charged a fee for point to point trips so a round trip starting and finishing in Vancouver made sense.

Keep the driving short

Aim for no more than three hours of planned driving time per day. I found that every hour of driving on paper was more like two to two and a half in real life. When you factor in stops and spontaneous detours, the time quickly disappears. Any more than this quickly becomes a slog. 

We had one long 'travel' day that we needed to incorporate to get back from Banff to Kamloops which was around 6 hours of solid driving. It was hard work!

Check campsite facilities ahead of time

Some campsites are better equipped than others. Every few days you will likely need enhanced facilities like waste disposal, electric hookups and decent showers, so build these into your plan. Backcountry stuff can be fun and give you some unique locations to stop but we found the practicalities of charging phones/cooking/washing etc meant more often than not you would need an electric hook up as a minimum.

Mind the seasons

This will be a huge factor. Canada has some savage winter conditions, and whilst vehicles are kitted out for it, some routes and areas become impassable in a camper.

May to October is the best time of year to go, although it will be busier. We travelled in early to mid-October and found many sites had already shut down for the year or had reduced facilities available. I would say anything after this should be carefully thought through 

Fleshing out the route

Now you have the logistics sorted, you can start to flesh out the route. I'd recommend picking between one and three points of interest per day.

Any more than this will probably make the journey feel rushed, and likely won't give you sufficient time to explore and enjoy what you've chosen. Accept that there will be some trade-offs, and that you may not get to everything this time round. if you want some inspiration then check out my top 5 post here.

Our route