Canada
Kananaskis Country
The Rockies without the crowds — families ski, climb, and ride through wildflower meadows.
Kananaskis Country stretches along the eastern slopes of the Canadian Rockies — the same mountains as Banff, the same glacial valleys, a fraction of the people. This is where Albertan families actually go.
Kananaskis Country is a collection of provincial parks and recreation areas south of Banff in the Alberta Rockies. The Nakoda Lodge offers Stoney Nakoda cultural programming — a mountain perspective maintained for thousands of years by the people who lived here before the parks were drawn on maps. Family-friendly via ferratas at Mount Norquay let children and adults climb fixed-route cliff faces with panoramic mountain views. Wildflower meadows in July and August carpet the valley floors. The Nordic spa at Kananaskis Mountain Lodge offers outdoor pools at 40°C surrounded by snow-capped peaks. Peter Lougheed Provincial Park at the southern end contains some of the finest mountain lake hiking in the Rockies.
Family
The via ferrata, the wildlife, the Nordic spa, and the Stoney Nakoda cultural programming make Kananaskis the Rocky Mountain family destination that delivers Banff's scenery without Banff's crowds.
Couple
The Nordic spa beneath the peaks, the wildflower meadows, and the quiet lake trails — Kananaskis offers the Rockies at their most romantic and least commercialised.
Friends
Mountain biking, via ferrata, backcountry hiking, and the Nordic spa — Kananaskis gives groups the full mountain experience without the Banff Avenue crowds and parking queues.
- The Nakoda Lodge and cultural programmes offer Stoney Nakoda perspectives on the mountains that have been their home for millennia.
- Family-friendly via ferratas at Mount Norquay let children and adults climb fixed-route cliff faces with mountain panoramas.
- Wildflower meadows in July and August turn the valley floors into carpets of colour between the peaks.
- Half the crowds of Banff with the same mountain grandeur — K-Country is where Albertan families actually go.
Nakiska Lodge's fireside dining serves Alberta beef and seasonal Rocky Mountain fare after a day on the trails.
Pack picnics from Canmore's artisan delis — local charcuterie, sourdough, and mountain cheese.
Pedra de Lume
Cape Verde
Float in a salt lake inside an extinct volcano, crater walls rising on every side.
Vale do Paúl
Cape Verde
Sugarcane terraces spill down a volcanic crater into the greenest valley in the archipelago.
Monastery of St. Anthony
Egypt
Earth's oldest inhabited monastery, wedged into a Red Sea mountain canyon since the fourth century.
Hoang Su Phi
Vietnam
Rice terraces so vertiginous they look like topographical maps carved directly into the sky.
Cape Dorset (Kinngait)
Canada
The print-making capital of the Arctic — Inuit artists carve stone and stories into polar silence.
Ferryland
Canada
Picnic on a headland above a 17th-century colony while icebergs drift past and puffins wheel.
Mount Robson
Canada
The Canadian Rockies' highest peak rarely reveals its summit — clouds guard it like a secret.
Thetford Mines
Canada
Open-pit asbestos mines swallowed half the town — the craters remain, eerie and vast.