Originally Posted by Riderfan_lee
I'm going to have to disagree with you on this. I camped my way through the parks this summer on my bike trip and my daily cost was around $25/day and that was without sharing a campsite with anyone. For people who don't want to camp/ haul camping gear there are hostels for around $15-$20/night but as other have said, need to be booked far in advance (6 months to 1 year). Add meals/ grocery store lunches you are looking at around $40-$55/ day for staying in hostels and buying meals at grocery stores/ restaraunts. If you stay away from the big centres in the national parks in this area (Lake Louise, Banff, Jasper) prices are much more reasonable.
+1 I think you can have a very reasonable trip in the Canadian Rockies as long as you stay away from the hotels and tourist restaurants. But, lets face it any really popular tourist destination in the world faces the same problem.
Our daily budget was:
- $10-15 for camp site
- $40 for one expensive lunch (we could easily have skipped this and eaten groceries if we wanted)
- $20 for drinks (free water is available along the whole route)
- $0 freeze dried meals (we had some old freeze dried meals left over which we ate)
- $0 energy bars (we had some almost out of date energy bars that needed eating)
If you bring a hammock or bivy sack there are tons of places to free camp right off the road.