I left Canada in 2007 at the age of 26 and just recently returned home. Since I still had the travel bug, the first trip I did was a week ago to Montreal for 4 days. Although it’s freezing cold, I’ve never been to this part of the country before and I was keen to how our French friends compared to the real deal.

This got me thinking about the amazing diversity of scenery and culture that we have here in Canada. I’ve spent 2 weeks in a car driving from London up to a ferry to cross over to Ireland, around Ireland, back on the ferry and up to Scotland, then back down to London and I have to say that much of that time was spent watching green rolling hills go by. By the end I missed the hustle and bustle of London and was sick of seeing green grass and cows.

Here in Canada we have much more of diversity, largely due to the size of our country, but even if we take the western part of the country we still have some different scenery.

As soon as you fly into Vancouver the mountains immediately stand out, and there are many mountains that can be seen from the city itself. From Vancouver you can head up to Whistler for some amazing mountain scenery. Maybe instead of that you could head to Kelowna and see the endless stretches of vineyards and wineries…. oh and some more mountains.

From the green grape vines in the Okanagan valley, you can keep heading north toward the Calgary where you can hang out with some cowboys before heading on to Banff for a taste of the Rocky Mountains. I would then drive up the icefields parkway to Jasper as this has to be one of the most amazing drives on the planet.

Once you get to Jasper you can head west to Edmonton and see a typical North American city, complete with a massive shopping mall. If you feel the need for some more mountains you can just head back down through Red Deer and Calgary back to Banff or you can keep heading west into Saskatoon. I would encourage people to take the latter route as this will take you into the prairies where there are no mountains, but just a flat plain.

Once you get to Saskatoon it’s time to turn around and make your way back to Calgary. One the way there is place called Drumheller which is the land of dinosaurs and is well worth checking out. The surrounding area is known as the “dead lands” and there scenery here is also very unique and well worth seeing.

From Calgary you choose your own adventure but what about some surf? I haven’t even mentioned Vancouver Island yet which is absolutely amazing. You could spend a month just on the island. I would suggest getting the ferry across so you can see what it looks like to float into the harbour in Victoria. From there I would just head up to Tofino and forget about the rest. There are other places to see on the island but if you explore Vitoria and Tofino you will not see anything to different or any more impressive.

So there you have it. Just in one part of Canada alone you can see some amazing mountains, world class wineries, green flat prairies, the dead lands straight from a John Wayne movie and the amazing beaches of Tofino. Where else in the world can you experience anything like that?