Why you should drive, not fly on your next trip from Vancouver to Calgary

There's a conversation that happens every time someone from Calgary heads to Vancouver, or the other way around. It goes something like: "Did you drive or fly?" And almost always, the answer is fly. Two hours. Quick and easy.

But here’s the thing: In making that decision, you’re missing out on one of Canada’s most varied and beautiful drives. But this spring, with the keys to the 2026 Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV and nowhere to be in a hurry, we decided to actually drive it. And it turns out, it’s a very different trip than skipping all of it at 35,000 feet.

Part of what makes this drive so special is how wildly varying it is. You leave the busy streets of Vancouver, the vast Pacific Ocean and the wet forest terrain, and push through the Coast Mountains on the Coquihalla, you drop into the wide open Okanagan Valley with its lakes and vineyards and warm desert air. Then the terrain shifts again as you climb into the Selkirk Mountains through Rogers Pass, and back down into the Columbia Valley, and finally into the Rocky Mountains through Yoho and Banff before the land flattens out into the Alberta prairie and Calgary appears on the horizon. Coast to mountains to wine country to glacier to Rockies to prairie, all in about 1,000 kilometres. I don’t think there is another drive in this country that moves through that many different worlds, that quickly.

You roll through the suburbs of Burnaby, Coquitlam and Abbotsford. The mountains get closer. The air changes. And suddenly you're in the Fraser Valley - flat farmland as far as the eye can see, snow-capped peaks on every side. And if you’re lucky on a clear day you’ll see a snow-capped volcano named Mt. Baker tower above it all.

Fun fact: Hope is where they filmed First Blood. The original Rambo. Sylvester Stallone, surviving in the wilderness, outrunning a small-town sheriff through the mountains and rivers right here. There's a Rambo statue in town now, which is exactly the kind of quirkiness we like from Canadian small towns. Worth a quick photo, for sure.

Hope is also a crossroads, you get to pick your route here, but you can’t really go wrong. You've got three options: Highway 1 through the Fraser Canyon is dramatic and winding, with cliffs dropping into the river, tunnels blasted through solid rock. Slower, but spectacular, Highway 3 heads southeast through Manning Park, beautiful and quiet, and maybe the least traveled of the three. And then there's Highway 5. The infamous Coquihalla. Faster, higher, and in early spring, a whole adventure of its own. We took the Coquihalla.

It climbs fast - over 1,200 metres of elevation gain as it cuts through the Cascades toward Merritt. The snow came in hard not long after we hit the pass. Fresh snow on the road, slick spring conditions and low visibility, the kind of conditions that separate a capable vehicle from one that has you white-knuckling the wheel. We put the Outlander PHEV into Snow mode using the drive mode selector and the Super All-Wheel Control (S-AWC) system did its thing to keep us safe and in control in treacherous conditions.

There’s a rich ranching heritage going back to the mid 1800s, and Canada's largest working cattle ranch, the Douglas Lake Cattle Company, is right next door. Hold on to your hats and don’t fall off your horse now: This ranch spans over 1.2 million acres. To put that in perspective: that's larger than Prince Edward Island. Up to 20,000 head of cattle are managed by a crew of cowboys, all on horseback. The cowboy thing here isn't a tourism gimmick. This is real life out here. And wherever there are cowboys … there's country music: Merritt is the Country Music Capital of Canada, and it earned that title by throwing one of the biggest country music festivals this country has ever seen. At its peak in 2005, the Merritt Mountain Music Festival drew 148,000 people to a town of just 7,000. Kenny Chesney, Reba McEntire, Wynonna Judd all played here. The festival eventually wound down, but what it left behind stuck: over 100 bronzed handprints on the Walk of Stars, large-scale country music murals painted across downtown, and the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame, which lives here permanently. It’s worth a slow walk and some photos.

And look, if there was ever a moment on a road trip to properly queue up a Canadian country playlist, it's pulling into the Country Music Capital of Canada in a vehicle with a top-spec Dynamic Sound Yamaha audio system. This is brand new for the 2026 Outlander PHEV (having been introduced in the 2025 Outlander gas model). Designed specifically for this vehicle by the Japanese audio brand’s “Sound Meisters.” It's the kind of system that makes you want to find the right playlist for every stretch of road. And Merritt hands you one on a silver platter. Turn up the volume for Canada’s finest, it just feels right. Here’s the playlist: Canadian Country Music

Kelowna is lake country and wine country in equal measure. Over 200 wineries within a short drive, a food scene that's grown up around them, and a downtown waterfront that's genuinely worth an evening. This is a proper destination, not just a place to sleep.

The drive from Merritt to Kelowna keeps delivering. The terrain shifts, the sagebrush hills open up, and then you crest one last ridge and Okanagan Lake is just there below you. This long, narrow, blue lake runs through the Okanagan valley floor. Warm, sunny, and dry.

Kelowna seemed like the perfect place for us to stop for the night after a long day of driving.

Where to stay:

• Budget: Samesun Kelowna, Holiday Inn Express
• Mid-range: Hotel Zed Kelowna, where we stayed. Retro design, fun vibe and right downtown in walking distance to everything.
• Luxury: The Eldorado Resort on the lakeshore, or look into a stay at Mission Hill itself.

For breakfast, Sunny's modern diner is the move, just around the corner. But hold off on coffee, Kelowna has some excellent local options like Bright Jenny Coffee Roasters, Cherry Hill Coffee, Local Chemist Coffee Bar and Craft 42. We grabbed the latter on our way out of town and it did not disappoint. Of course, we got some local wines to bring home too.

Wineries worth visiting, across the price range:

• Mission Hill Family Estate: This is the crown jewel. Perched on a hill with sweeping lake views, serious wines, and a stand-out restaurant. If you're going to splurge on one Okanagan experience, make it this one.
• Quails' Gate: Consistent and gorgeous. Right on the lake.
• Summerhill Pyramid Winery: Organic, biodynamic, and they age their wines in a pyramid.
• 50th Parallel Estate: A bit north of town and worth the detour. Great whites, beautiful setting.

Vernon is a great city worth knowing about, especially if you want to linger in the northern Okanagan. It's officially the Trails Capital of B.C. with an enormous connected trail network for hiking and mountain biking surrounding the city. Silver Star Mountain Resort sits just above town and is a world-class ski and mountain bike destination with its own charming village at the top.

It’s definitely worth spending some time in this area. We kept moving, but it's there.

Revelstoke sits between the Selkirk and Monashee mountain ranges, tucked into the world's only inland temperate rainforest; a rare ecosystem of old-growth cedar and hemlock that exists nowhere else on earth. It was historically known as the capital of the Canadian Alps, and looking at its surroundings, it’s easy to see why. Mount Revelstoke National Park sits directly above town. Then a bit to the East you’ll find Glacier National Park. Revelstoke Mountain Resort has the most vertical metres of any ski resort in North America: 1,713 metres from top to bottom. And the area holds the Canadian record for the snowiest single winter on record: 2,447 centimetres fell on Mount Copeland in the 1971-72 season. That's 24 meters or 80 feet of snow in one winter! The ski culture here goes back to the 1890s, when Norwegian miners showed up wearing what the locals called "Norwegian snowshoes" and essentially introduced the sport to B.C. The oldest ski club in the province was formed here not long after. A truly rich skiing history and culture exists here to this day.

In summer it flips into a hiking and mountain biking town, the trails are exceptional, and the main street has a great relaxed mountain town “vibe” to it. Local favorites are: Village Idiot, Chubby Funsters (get the poutine), both quirky and typical Revy. For coffee and a sandwich, track down Spilt Milk. If you have the flexibility for an extra night anywhere on this drive, Revelstoke is the answer. It really deserves more than a quick stop, like so many places on this drive.

From Revelstoke you enter Glacier National Park and climb toward Rogers Pass, a stunning drive, yet again. The story of this place is worth knowing before you drive it.

In 1881, a surveyor named Major Albert Bowman Rogers struggled up the Illecillewaet Valley through the Selkirks, ran out of food near the summit, and had to turn back, but not before he caught a glimpse of a narrow pass through the mountains. Enough for him to know that he’d found it. The CPR had paid him $5,000 for locating a route through what had been considered an impenetrable mountain barrier. He had the cheque framed and hung on his brother's wall. He never cashed it.

The railway crews who followed didn't have it nearly as easy. The CPR pushed steel through Rogers Pass in 1885 under brutal conditions: avalanches, forest fires, rainstorms, and one construction manager wrote to head office that the snowslides were "much more serious than anticipated, and I think are quite beyond your ideas of their magnitude and danger." He was right. The CPR eventually built 31 snowsheds totalling over six and a half kilometres to protect the line, and still lost more than 200 workers to avalanches between 1886 and 1916. On the night of March 4, 1910, while crews were clearing one slide on Cheops Mountain, a second avalanche came down and killed 62 men. Most were of Japanese descent. It remains one of the deadliest avalanche disasters in Canadian history. In 1912 the CPR admitted defeat, started digging an eight-kilometre tunnel under the mountain, and by 1916 the Connaught Tunnel had replaced the pass entirely. The Trans-Canada Highway wasn't pushed through Rogers Pass until 1962, and it took 500 workers six years to do it. You can stop at the Rogers Pass Discovery Centre right at the summit. It's worth it.

The avalanche risk hasn't gone away. Parks Canada and the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery run the world's largest mobile avalanche control program right here, using 105mm howitzers positioned along the road to trigger controlled slides before they happen on their own. You can sometimes see the gun positions from the highway.

In early spring the snow levels are genuinely staggering. We drove through sections where the banks on either side of the road were taller than the Mitsubishi Outlander, walls of white with the pavement carved through them. Beautiful, and a little humbling. Once again Snow mode and the S-AWC handled it like a charm.

Yoho comes from a Cree expression of awe and wonder. It's Canada's second-oldest national park, established in 1886, on the same day as Glacier, after Prime Minister John A. Macdonald took a trip on the newly completed CPR and came back so inspired he created two national parks on the spot. The park sits on the western slope of the Continental Divide and shares borders with Banff to the east and Kootenay to the south. It's smaller than its neighbours but packs in 28 peaks above 3,000 metres, some of the most dramatic waterfalls in the country, and one of the most significant fossil sites on earth. The Burgess Shale, up in the mountains above Field, contains soft-bodied marine creatures from 508 million years ago, preserved in great detail. Scientists come from around the world to study it.

Emerald Lake is one of the most beautiful bodies of water you'll find anywhere. Glacial meltwater, mountains on every side, and a stunning Emerald colour that almost looks fake until you're standing in front of it. Don't miss it. Emerald Lake Lodge is worth a stay as well.

Natural Bridge is a five-minute stop on the way to Emerald Lake where the Kicking Horse River has carved a literal arch through solid rock. A quick and easy stop worth checking out.

One more stop worth knowing about if you have time: the Spiral Tunnels viewpoint, right off the Trans-Canada Highway. The grade through Kicking Horse Pass was so steep in the early days of the railway that loaded trains couldn't safely make it down, it was called the Big Hill, and it has claimed its fair share of casualties. In 1909 the CPR solved the problem it by drilling two spiral tunnels inside the mountains, allowing the track to loop inside the rock and descend at a safe grade. You can watch trains emerge from one tunnel and disappear into another from the highway viewpoint, if one happens to pass while you're there.

And then there's Field. Population: not many (less than 200). But Field has Truffle Pigs, which is actually a great restaurant and one of my favorite “hidden gems” with an ambitious menu for a restaurant in a town of a few hundred people in the middle of the Rocky Mountains. It shouldn’t be this good, but it is. If you can time a meal here, do it.

If you're visiting later in the season, one more thing: the Yoho Valley Road opens in late June once the snow clears, and it leads to Takakkaw Falls: one of the highest waterfalls in Canada, fed by the Daly Glacier high above the valley. The word Takakkaw means "it is magnificent" in Cree. From the falls, the Iceline Trail is one of the great day hikes in the Canadian Rockies. It climbs steeply above the treeline and then traverses an open alpine ridge with views across hanging glaciers, icefields, and the Yoho Valley below. It's long, plan a full day, but the scenery is on a different level from most hikes in the region.

And then, there’s Banff. Everyone knows Banff. The mountains are extraordinary, the town is lively, the options span every budget and every taste. It has been written about, photographed, painted and Instagrammed more than almost anywhere else in this country, and it deserves every bit of it. But that's also exactly why we chose not to linger here. We wanted to shine a light on the other parts of the drive that might not be on everyone’s screen saver yet. Banff will be exactly what you expect. And after two days of everything above, that's not a complaint. Arriving here from the west, having actually driven the whole thing, it hits differently. You've earned it.

But most of all: this country we live in is ridiculously beautiful. And so much of it exists right between two cities that people keep flying between.

Next time, drive it. Take the Coquihalla when there's still snow on it. Stop in Merritt. Stroll the Kelowna waterfront. Have poutine in Revelstoke. Eat at Truffle Pigs. Drive Rogers Pass in the morning light.

You'll understand.

If You Go

Driving Time: Vancouver to Calgary via Coquihalla and Trans-Canada is roughly 1,000 km and about 9 to 10 hours straight through. It’s doable in a day, but budget two days minimum or as many days as you can spare to actually enjoy it.

• Best Time: Late spring through fall for clear roads, plus hiking and summer adventures. Early spring is dramatic and beautiful but check the Coquihalla road report before you leave Hope.
• Park Pass: Required for stopping in Glacier, Yoho and Banff. Available online or at the gates.
• Gas and Charging: Fill up in Hope, Merritt, Kelowna, Revelstoke and Golden. Most mid-range hotels along the route have EV charging. Call ahead to confirm anywhere else.
• Wildlife: Bears are active from spring onward. Give them space, don't stop in the middle of the road. Carry bear spray on hikes.
• Rogers Pass: Check Parks Canada's road and avalanche report before leaving Revelstoke in spring. It takes two minutes and is worth it.