Icefields Parkway with Toddlers: Ultimate Banff & Jasper Family Guide

Road tripping from Banff to Jasper along the Icefields Parkway has always been a bucket list, idyllic vacation for me and this summer we finally did it as a family with our toddlers in tow. Yes, you can Icefields Parkway with toddlers.

It wasn’t quite the windows-down, arms-outstretched montage cut with picturesque mountain views we were hoping for between flight delays, rental car issues, wildfire smoke hazing out 90% of those postcard vistas we were *checks notes* THERE TO SEE, and about 157 other little mishaps.

But, even with the universe testing our upbeat attitudes, our Icefields Parkway with toddlers itinerary still made for a really memorable trip. We learned a ton about what’s feasible to do in the Banff & Jasper area with toddlers (our kids are 3 and 1), where is good to eat, and which things to just skip until you’re in a little-kid-free era, so let’s dive in with the basics.

Driving the Icefields Parkway With Toddlers

We started our trip flying into Calgary, where we rented a car to drive the roughly 1.5 hours to Banff. There are bus and even train tours around the Rocky Mountains/National Parks area but when you’re traveling the Icefields Parkway with toddlers, having your own car to move at your own pace (read: a lot of potty breaks), and to annihilate with Cheez-It crumbs is really so convenient.

We brought our car seats from home for this trip (side note: they’re free to check as baggage with most airlines), but to be honest with two kids it was an absolute pain to lug them from baggage claim to the car and back a couple of times so next time we’ll probably look into just renting car seats from the rental car company.

The Icefields Parkway is always rated as one of the most scenic drives in the world, and is the stretch of road from Banff to Jasper. If you were going straight through, it would take about three hours, though there are tons of things to stop and see along the way so it could really be a multi-day affair if you wanted it to be.

We chose to stay three days in Banff and two in Jasper before heading back to Calgary for our flight home, so we actually did the Icefields Parkway drive in both directions.

So, let’s break it down into three sections: Banff, Jasper and the Icefields Parkway.

Banff with Toddlers

The drive from Calgary to Banff isn’t really that exciting, so we didn’t plan any stops along the way and just drove straight through to check into our hotel and start the next day fresh in town. A very important part of this plan is having enough toddler entertainment for those long stretches (here’s a roundup of what’s been the biggest hits for our kids this summer)

As for our Banff experience, I’m not going to sugar coat it: the weather was pretty miserable for us. It was cold and rainy, which meant clouds covered most of the mountain views in town, and wildfire smoke was creeping in to make extra sure our photos wouldn’t do the town justice.

Still, this little mountain town is very cute and super toddler-friendly.

Where We Ate

We headed downtown the morning after we got in to find some breakfast and ate at Melissa’s MissedSteak which is honestly more of a bar vibe with a dancefloor, pool tables, a stage and signs for karaoke everywhere, but it turns out they serve an incredible breakfast. They had coloring pages ready for the kids with a decent kids menu, and our 3-year-old was very into the maple syrup and Canadian bacon.

Probably our favorite Banff restaurant of the trip, though, was the Bear Street Tavern! Their pizza was amazing. They serve it with local honey and a chili oil you mix to make a dipping sauce that I’m honestly still thinking about.

One day for lunch, we headed into Magpie & Stump where Alex had what he says is the best Mexican food he’s ever had. A big call considering we’ve been to, ya know, Mexico, but there’s probably not many places you can get a pulled bison burrito so it’s pretty unique. The kids menu had some good options, too – meals like a tortilla pizza, not just regular old mac & cheese or chicken tenders they slap onto kids’ menus most places.

For coffee, we stopped in at Banff National Perk (love a good punny name) which not only has good coffee but also opens at 6am to grab your emotional support iced latte before beating the crowds to trails.

The last notable stop on our food list was COWS ice cream. I later learned this is a chain, but we walked by and saw a line out the door so took a chance assuming it must be good. It was. The kids didn’t win any tastebud awards for their pick of vanilla with sprinkles, but Alex and I both tried the maple cookie and coconut cream pie and they were so good.

Where We Stayed

In Banff we stayed at the Buffalo Mountain Lodge which was perfect while traveling with toddlers. It was close to town (a 5-minute drive) but far enough into the mountain that it felt like a cabin experience. The room had everything we needed, especially a nice big tub to give the kids a bath and a little outdoor sitting area for an adult beverage after baby bedtime.

What We Did

With our kids being so small, we knew long hikes weren’t going to be in the cards. Our 1-year-old isn’t walking yet so he was in a carrier (here’s our favorite affordable one!), and our 3-year-old was walking on her own.

Our favorite hike of the trip was Johnston Canyon, which is about 30 minutes outside of Banff. We arrived quite early in the morning around 8 or 9, but might even recommend it being a first thing activity at like 7am (for those of us with kids who inexplicably wake up at 5:30 am) because of how busy it was.

The hike to the lower falls took us about 30 minutes each way with about 127 snack and rest breaks, and we had to wait in line for about 30 minutes to get into the little cave to see the waterfall up close but that could’ve been because we were there at such a busy time.

The views are really pretty and varied to keep things interesting for littles – a river, some waterfalls, trees, flowers, bridges to walk along, etc. – and it’s mostly very flat. You could probably even take a stroller along most of the hike to the lower falls, but it would have to be a pretty heavy duty one (and not have rained recently!).

The other Banff-area hike we did was around Lake Louise. This is the bucket listiest of the bucket list items for this trip and not to be a Debbie Downer, but it was still pretty cloudy for us. Despite that, it was a trip highlight and so beautiful there – the color of the water is amazing.

We paid the $20-ish to park in the upper parking lot (it was busy here too!), and walked down to the kayak launch to take the iconic photo of the lake where the mountains meet. If you veer around to the right past the hotel and along the trail, you can keep walking around the lake.

The full walk is 13km or something insane so it’s just a ‘keep walking until you want to turn around’ kind of situation, and there are little log chairs along the way for toddler breaks. This is another one that is probably 90% stroller friendly!

Note: We wanted to do Moraine Lake as well but as of July the road out there was closed to everyone but shuttle buses and those buses were booked months in advance, so we should’ve planned ahead on that one.

In town, there’s a little nature-themed playground at the very end of the main street near where the buses come and go. If you’re wandering around downtown and need to let the kids run wild, that’s a good spot to do it – and they have a big, clean bathroom building there too. You can walk a little further down and cross a pedestrian bridge, but don’t be like us and let your 1-year-old throw his shoe over the edge to go fish out.

Icefields Parkway

Next, we were onto the Icefields Parkway! Like I said, this is a verrryyyy famous stretch of road with a lottt of longer hikes and stops that would be fun to do kid-free, but we’re going to keep it narrowed down to the toddler-friendly views.

Coming from Banff, Lake Louise is technically the start of the Icefields Parkway. This would be a good first stop if you didn’t do that trip on any Banff days. Bow Lake is about 40km from Lake Louise and is a good side-of-the-road stop to see that turquoise water and the Crowfoot Glacier which is pretty amazing.

For us, we left around naptime so our kids would sleep during a lot of the pretty scenery they didn’t care about (which meant we could jump out of the car and enjoy them too). We made a few stops to snap photos but the next bigger stop was the Columbia Icefield, about 80km from Bow Lake.

There’s a glorified port-a-potty there to take a break, and a little parking area. It’s a perfect point to stretch legs, and walk up the rocky hill and over the other side to see the massive glacier up pretty close. There are depressing signs along the way showing how much more widespread the glacier used to be at certain points, but we don’t need to talk about that part.

Our 3-year-old is in a real rock phase so she loved this stop.

A few more kilometres down the road is the Skywalk, which was really popular, but we didn’t make that stop. Others we skipped but that are popular are Athabasca Falls, Peyto Lake, and Sunwapta Falls. As for bathroom breaks, there are quite a few of those port-a-potty type buildings at the scenic outlooks and there’s a gas station/gift shop/restaurant about halfway with actual bathrooms.

It also should be noted that really anywhere along the drive you can see wildlife, which is always fun for kids. We saw a lot of elk, a couple of little black foxes, a moose sitting in the grass, a herd of mountain goats right by a sign aptly named “Goats and Glaciers” and – an obvious highlight – two black bears!

We made it into Jasper by mid-afternoon, which meant the drive took us about 5-ish hours total with all the stops.

Jasper

For us, Jasper was the less cute and exciting town of the two (which may have been because the smoke and visibility was an issue), but it gave more outdoorsy vibes and is where we saw most of the wildlife!

Where We Ate

Our first night we went to the Maligne Canyon Wilderness Kitchen and loved it. We sat outside on the deck and ordered some appetizers to share between the four of us: the kids obliterated the mac & cheese and we were huge fans of the brisket poutine. We also saw a huge male elk with his antlers crossing the river right by us from the deck which was really cool.

In town, we grabbed lunch from Patricia Street Deli to eat on the road as we explored the mountains one afternoon. These sandwiches were surprisingly delicious – the bread was on point, the veggies were fresh, and the rotisserie chicken they make in house was so good. They even cut up one sub sandwich into four pieces to make it easier for toddler hands.

We grabbed a quick pretzel and a beer at the Jasper Brewing Company where we shamelessly set the kids up with a tablet (this is the kid-friendly one we have) so we could have a little break. The beer we tried was great, and rest of their menu looked good, too, with a kids menu!

We had breakfast one morning at Papa George’s which was one of the few places open early, and they had huge portions so we actually just split our meals with the kids. Plus they had coloring sheets for the little ones!

The last highlight meal was the takeout we got from Jasper Pizza Place. We couldn’t let the Pizza Friday tradition go astray on the road, could we? We got The Canadian to appease the kids, but they had some good options we would’ve liked to try if we ordered more just for us adults.

Where We Stayed

We loved our Jasper accommodation – Pine Bungalows. It is almost part-hotel, part-cabin with hotel-like rooms in the main building, little cabins, bigger spaces, and they were constructing larger 10-person cabins at the time we were there.

We stayed in a King Suite which had a king bed for us and a twin bed for our 3-year-old. The baby slept in a pack and play in all the places we stayed. The little cabin was bigger than it looked from the outside, and had a tub for the kids which is a plus. There is a fire pit and a picnic table outside. Fun Fact: Jasper is one of only a few dark sky preserves in the world, so stargazing out here would be really fun!

We couldn’t because of the smoke, though, and it doesn’t get dark until about 10pm in the summer so we probably would’ve had to wake the kids up to see. Guess we’ll just have to go back some other time!

Anyway, Pine Bungalows has a very vibey little cafe and restaurant, a firepit near the check-in desk if you don’t want to bother lighting your own, and the front desk even texts you to make sure everything is alright when you get into your cabin.

Oh, and they gave us a little key and a map showing us where there’s a scavenger hunt area for the kids. We didn’t get to do the hunt, but it was a really cute idea.

We would definitely stay again!

What We Did

This one was a bit of a risk: we took the kids canoeing. We knew this would either be an amazing experience or a total shitshow and luckily for us it was the first.

We had considered kayaking on Lake Louise back near Banff but the lines were absolutely insane, it was pretty expensive, and quite cloudy. Instead, we rented canoes on Maligne Lake (about an hour from Jasper), which was much more budget friendly at about $160CAD to rent two canoes for an hour.

It was only us and one other family in the boat house getting our life jackets on so it was a much calmer experience, and both kids actually did really well sitting still for an hour (with the promise of a lot of snacks).

The only downside is that there are a ton of boat tours that leave nearby and when they do, it sends a lot of ripples along the side of the lake where we were canoeing so I said “SIT IN THE MIDDLE” to our 3-year-old a lot as she tried to lean over and look at the waves splashing and topple us. Serene.

Still, this was one of those activities we didn’t expect a lot out of but had a lot of fun. It would be even better with kids a little older and you’d probably be able to venture out farther into the lake, too.

Our very last activity was a sunrise wildlife tour. The animals in the park are most active at sunrise and sunset so a lot of tours leave around 5:30p.m. which is nightmare fuel to be stuck in a bus with toddlers pre-dinner. This tour was the only one I found to leave at 6 a.m. and is perfect for toddlers because the mornings are angelic.

Unfortunately we didn’t see a lot of wildlife on ours, but the tour guide was really accommodating to the kids and had a lot of interesting stories about the history of the park.

Overall, this trip was amazing and road trips are perfect for testing the waters of traveling with toddlers before taking on more fast-paced city-type adventures. We definitely need to plan a trip back to Banff & Jasper in a few years when the kids are older and can handle some longer outdoorsy activities, but this was the perfect summer road trip for us!

If you enjoyed this post about traveling the Icefields Parkway with toddlers and our itinerary for visiting Banff and Jasper, make sure to sign up to our newsletter and follow us on Instagram.