Canada's 10 most incredible National Parks for your car hire in Canada
Banff National Park
Canada’s oldest national park started with three prospectors poking around the Rockies. They didn’t find gold, just a steaming, sulfurous hot spring, but the protection of that discover, in 1885, led to the creation of a 656-square-mile park of jagged snowcapped mountains, broad U-shaped valleys, turquoise lakes, rich forests, and meandering rivers. More than 4 million visit some of the world’s best hiking and skiing every year. More about Banff National park >
Cape Breton Highlands National Park
The highlight of the 367-squre-mile park, which stretches across the top of Cape Breton Island, is a driving tour; the spectacular 66-mile section of the Cabot Trail. A roller coaster of a road flanked by ocean and forested highlands, it climbs to heights of 1,200 feet (with breathtaking coastal views), twists around hairpin turns, and sinks down to the shore, threading in and out of the park boundaries and through small communities.
Fundy National Park
When you paddle in deep water past the park’s coastal cliffs, it’s hard to imagine that you can return later in the day and have a beach stroll in exactly the same spot-here, tides are so massive, they push rivers back upstream. More about Fundy National Park >
Jasper National Park
Raging rivers, crashing waterfalls, and one of the world’s most accessible glaciers are just three reasons why people drive the 142-mile Icefields Parkway, which winds from Lake Louise to Jasper. Once they arrive, they bike wooed trails, raft on waters that were glacier ice hours earlier, and soak in Miette Hotsprings, the hottest mineral pool in the Rockies. What makes the park particularly appealing though, is that it’s so easy to stumble across wildlife. More about Jasper National Park >
Pacific Rim National Park
Vancouver Island’s west coast is already Canada’s top surfing destination. Add a 46-mile trail through old-growth temperature rain forest, a hundred islands for wilderness kayakers, and 20,000 migrating gray whales each spring, and it’s no wonder the 93-mile strip of seashore is so popular that reservations are required to visit certain areas. More about Pacific Rim National Park >
Point Pelee National Park
It’s all about birds and butterflies on this tiny peninsula, which pokes into Lake Erie like a dagger. More than two-thirds marsh, the beach-fringed finger of land, measuring just six square miles, is a haven for tired birds and butterflies migrating across the Great Lake to Mexico and beyond. In May, up to 25,000 bird-watchers also land here for the show. More about Point Pelee National Park >
Prince Edward Island National Park
Beyond PEI’s rolling green hills, creamy-white churches, and mussel farms are the long, sandy beaches, rust-red cliffs, and giant shifting sand dunes of Prince Edward Island National Park. Spread across 25 miles of the north shore, this is one of Canada’s smallest-yet busiest-parks. More about Prince Edward Island National Park >
Saguenay-St. Lawrence National Park
Gouged out by a glacier, with banks blanketed in thick forest and flanked by rugged cliffs, the spectacular, 60-mile Saguenay Fjord eventually merges its warm waters with the chilly St. Lawrence Estuary, creating one of North America’s richest feeding grounds for whales. Settle yourself on the shore, and you may even spot a blue whale-the biggest mammal on earth.
Waterton Lakes National Park
Separated by a slashed clearing through the forest, Alberta’s Waterton Lakes National Park and neighboring Glacier National Park in Montana from the world’s first International Peace Park. The tiny lakeside town of Waterton sits where the Rocky Mountains drop dramatically to rolling prairies, generating winds so strong the historic seven-story Prince of Wales Hotel has to be anchored with huge cables. Book your car rental with Freeway.