The highway runs north along the coast where the fishing villages are painted in colors that make sense against the grey Atlantic sky, past the fjords and ancient rock of Gros Morne, and ends at L'Anse aux Meadows, where the Norse landed a thousand years before Columbus.

You paddle through still water at dusk, portaging between lakes, while a loon calls somewhere in the trees behind you.

Each autumn the world's largest gathering of polar bears collects along the Hudson Bay coast to wait for the sea ice, and you watch them from a camp set right in the middle of it.

You watch a cathedral of ten-thousand-year-old ice drift past the headland, close enough to hear it crack and settle in the water.

A glass dome arcs overhead so the peaks rise straight above you, and when a canyon or a waterfall comes into view, you can step out onto the open-air platform and feel the mountain air as it passes.

Canada's surf capital sits at the wild western edge of Vancouver Island, where the Pacific rolls in against miles of empty sand and old-growth rainforest comes right down to the beach. You paddle out in a wetsuit, ride what the ocean gives you, and come back to shore to warm up by a fire while the mist drifts in through the cedars.

The world's second largest Dark Sky Preserve lets the Milky Way come out so bright that it casts a shadow. Lie back on a dock at Maligne Lake and you'll see the mountains reflected below you and the entire galaxy arching above.

A floatplane delivers you to a lodge deep in the rainforest, where grizzlies fish the salmon run below your viewing stand. Your guides know these bears by name and by history, and they'll tell you which cub belongs to which mother as you watch.

You stand on the ocean floor in the morning and kayak over that exact spot by afternoon, beneath the highest tides on Earth. One hundred billion tonnes of seawater move in and out of this bay twice a day, carving the sandstone into shapes that look deliberate.

You move between steaming pools and cold plunges while the flakes land on your shoulders and vanish. Between rounds you'll wrap yourself in a robe by an outdoor fire, watching the snow pile up on the riverbank.

The whole hillside turns red and gold, and fiddle music spills out of a roadside pub as you pass. The road climbs along the cliffs above the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where whales surface far below while you're still looking at the trees.

Fresh snow and empty runs lead you to the gondola over to Blackcomb, with the coast range stretching out below. The village waits at the bottom with a fire, a drink, and a seat with your name on it.