Banff Travel Forum

Is 23 days enough time to drive from Banff to Jasper then up the Alaska Highway, to Denali National park and down to Prince Rupert, Queen Charlotte Island for a day and then drive to Vancouver, Whistler and back to Calgary??? Would also like to do a whale watching tour somewhere and a grizzly bear tour too. Thanks.

I have not visited all these places, but I've been to some of them.
I drove from Vancouver through Jasper, Banff and Calgary on September 2007. I've seen Orcas when I visited Victoria Island (near to Vancouver). You don't need book a boat in advance. There's a lot of boats there and you can buy the ticket on time.
You should stay in Jasper for 3 days at least, if you like natural life. I recommend cabins near to the city. They are more delightful than the hotels in the city.
I also think is a good idea spend 2 days in Banff.
When you go from Vancouver to Jasper, begin the journey in order to through the Route 93 on daytime. You'll see breathtaking landscapes.
Try a bus ride on Columbia Icefield when you get from Jasper to Banff. You can buy the ticket on time.
There's a helicopter flight over Atabaska too. It's really worth.
Have a nice trip and good luck.

That's a lot of driving to do in 3 weeks. The scenery is great, but you are going to have a bunch of days where you do nothing but drive. Also, keep in mind that many of the roads in the Yukon and Alaska are not paved, so your top speed will be limited.

That's hugely ambitious. It's doable, but that's a LOT of driving!

To put it in perspective, it takes less time to drive to Mexico from Vancouver than it does to drive to the Yukon or Alaska.

You are asking the wrong question. The question isn't whether you have the time in only 23 days to drive all of these huge distances it is whether you will have time to get out of the car to actually see and experience anything which should be the point of going to Yukon and Alaska. The question you should be asking is whether such a trip makes sense and it does not. This is a minimum 28-30 day trip. Someone else on this forum is planning a similar trip but in 28 days. Three weeks is nowhere near enough time to actually see the Rockies, Yukon/Alaska and coastal BC by driving.

If you only have 28 days I strongly suggest you skip Vancouver and Whistler and drive back to Calgary from Prince Rupert. You can easily see Vancouver/Whistler ( and Vancouver Island ) in a future trip. It is easy to fly to Vancouver for a future trip. It is not easy to drive the Alaska highway its full length and I suspect you won't be doing this every year. There is little point in driving for days on end to remote, inaccessible locations if you aren't planning on spending the required time to actually see them.

You haven't mentioned where you are planning to stop as well as how many days you are planning to spend at these places except for the one day travesty at Queen Charlotte Islands. The QCI are beautiful, exotic and remote. They require several days at least to see. There is little point in traveling to Northern BC/Alaska, not seeing QCI properly and rushing down in order to see Vancouver/Whistler.

As for Whistler, if you are seeing the mountains in Banff, the Icefields Parkway, Jasper, hopefully Kluane NP in the Yukon, and Denali/Alaska Whistler can wait for another year.

As another poster said it is closer to Mexico from Vancouver than Alaska. If you are set on driving to Alaska in only three weeks skip the Vancouver/Whistler section. Your trip will be much better the more time you have to actually spend in the Rockies, Yukon/Alaska and QCI. I also recommend taking the Alaska ferries down from Skagway to Prince Rupert on the return trip. It will save you some driving and the views are incredible.