Western Canada is a treasure of North America. Pastel turquoise lakes surrounded by the towering peaks of the Canadian Rocky Mountains – there's nowhere else like it. Here are the 15 most beautiful places you can visit in this breathtaking landscape.

It's been raining for three days straight. We're driving along what's supposedly one of the most beautiful highways in the world — the road to Alaska — but aside from a broken road and bears along the way, we haven't seen a single stunning view.

On 29 June, we set off on our first major road trip across North America — three months driving from Canada through Alaska to the USA. Follow along as we share where we go, what we see, and how much it all costs.

After our article about the dark side of working in Canada, many of you asked why we were there and why we kept coming back. So here's our honest story about moving to Canada — and everything we learned along the way.

Upon arriving at the place from which we'd been posting breathtaking mountain photos, I had a mental breakdown in our 2×2 metre room with a shared kitchen for 40 people and one mouse. "I want to go home. What was I thinking!" I screamed during our first hours in the staff accommodation in the forest above Banff, where we were supposed to spend 2.5 months.

There are thousands of beautiful places in the world, but it wasn't the postcards that kept pulling me back to Canada — it was the extraordinary Canadian friendliness that makes it a country where people still genuinely enjoy living.