Moon Handbooks - Alberta
Travel Guidebook Covers the Province Including the Canadian Rockies
This entertaining and comprehensive guidebook for Alberta, Canada from the popular Moon Handbooks series is a good read for residents and visitors alike.
Alberta is One of Canada's Western Provinces
The 2007 edition of Moon Handbooks - Alberta, Including Banff, Jasper, and the Canadian Rockies, by Andrew Hempstead (Avalon Travel Publishing, Emeryville CA, ISBN-10:1-56691-835-9, ISBN-13: 978-1-56691-835-0) opens with a classic photo of beautiful Lake Louise, one of the most scenic gems of the Canadian Rocky Mountains.
While visitors to Western Canada might have been told that everything worth seeing in the province of Alberta lies in Banff National Park en route to Vancouver, this guidebook is a very convincing reminder that Alberta is big, beautiful, and varied, with much more than "just" the Rockies.
The map inside the front cover is a useful "Alberta at a glance" wayfinder. The province is about 661,848 square kilometres in area. For comparison, Great Britain is about 240,820 square kilometres, and Texas 678,051 square kilometres. Much of the area lies north of Edmonton, the capital city.
Guide Book for Alberta Offers Wide Variety
Many guide books for Canada give Alberta short shrift, mentioning Calgary, Edmonton, Banff, Jasper and not much else. This one is devoted to the province and the coverage is both wide and deep.
There are whole chapters on
- Calgary, with a section on the Calgary Stampede including an explanation of the different rodeo events
- Dinosaur Valley, including Drumheller, the Royal Tyrrell Museum (famous for dinosaurs), and Dinosaur Provincial Park
- Southern Alberta
- West of Calgary, including Kananaskis Country
- each of Banff National Park and Jasper National Park
- Central Alberta
- Edmonton, including West Edmonton Mall, location of Fantasyland Hotel
- Northern Alberta, including Fort McMurray
as well as information on
- Background
- Essentials
- Resources
and a comprehensive index.
Many Useful Maps, Photos and Suggested Tours
Moon Handbooks - Alberta features some colour photographs of Alberta at the start, showing off a little of the province's incredible natural beauty. Throughout the book there are black and white photos illustrating the text. For every region there is a map showing the highways and important sites and features.
The "Explore Alberta" section sets out a selection of road trips in different regions with detailed itineraries, each around seven days long.
Recommendations for Where to Stay and Where to Eat
As expected, this travel guide for Alberta gives accommodation and restaurant listings in various price ranges. One impressive feature of the book is the level of detail for many of the smaller, less well-known towns and villages. There is a completely different feel to rural Alberta as compared to the cities, and this book should encourage visitors to step off the beaten track.
Extensive Coverage of Attractions
The narrative portions of Moon Handbooks - Alberta are a good read in and of themselves. Packed with historic facts and notes about the culture and natural environment of Alberta, the guidebook is entertaining and well researched.
This is a book suitable for carrying in the glove compartment whether you live in Alberta or are visiting. It provides many travel alternatives and goes a long way toward explaining that Alberta is more than the Rockies and the Calgary Stampede.
