Road Trip Math: The Banff and Jasper Road Trip, Turned Into a Game
One of the most beautiful drives in the world, a family in the car, and math questions that decide which road you take.
Some drives are famous for the scenery. The road from Calgary to Banff and up the Icefields Parkway to Jasper is famous for everything: turquoise lakes, glaciers you can see from the car, elk at the side of the road, and mountains that fill the whole windshield.
Most people never get to make that trip. Plenty who live a day's drive away still haven't. And very few have ever stood on frozen Lake Louise in winter with skates on.
So we built it. Road Trip Math is the whole trip in a game: you drive it, you answer math on the way, and you stop for the adventures that make the Canadian Rockies what they are.
How the drive works
You pick who's going (one traveler or the whole family), choose your ride, and set off from Calgary.
Numbers float down the road ahead of you. Drive through them to build the question. Then the road splits into three, and each road has a sign with an answer on it. Steer into the right answer. Pick the wrong one and you hit a dead end, back out, and try another.
That's the whole idea: the math decides where you go. It is never a quiz you sit and fill in. It is the steering wheel.
The questions match the grade you choose, from Grade 1 to Grade 8: making 10 and adding to 20 for the little ones, then place value, times tables, fractions, decimals, percents and integers as they grow. We built them from public curriculum documents, and we kept them to the kind of math you can actually do in your head while you're driving: friendly numbers, real strategies, nothing that needs a pencil.
Stuck twice on the same fork? Pull over and Coro the songbird explains it on a chalkboard, one step at a time, before you drive on.
The road itself
Along the way you pass the landmarks, each with a postcard and a fact worth saying out loud:
- Canmore and the Three Sisters, three peaks standing side by side.
- The Banff park gate. Banff became Canada's first national park in 1885.
- A wildlife overpass, a bridge covered in trees so animals can cross the highway safely.
- Lake Louise, then north onto the Icefields Parkway, often called one of the most beautiful drives in the world.
- Peyto Lake, the bright blue lake that looks like a wolf's head from the lookout.
- The Columbia Icefield, whose meltwater flows toward three different oceans.
- Athabasca Falls, where the river has carved a narrow canyon through solid rock.
And between Canmore and Banff, the paved road ends and a dirt road turns off into the trees: the off-road course. Mud, rolling hills that throw you into the air, a banked curve you can ride up to vertical, a log bridge over a gorge, a dark tunnel, a loop-the-loop and one very big jump. No math out there. Just a ride.
The adventures
The trip stops at the places people fly across the world to see. Each stop is its own adventure, and each one is something you can play, not just look at.
Banff: the hot springs
Banff's hot springs have drawn visitors for well over a century. In the game you sink into the steaming pool with the mountains all around and spot the animals that wander past: elk, bighorn sheep, a moose, a black bear, a mountain goat, an eagle. Tap one to spot it. Pinch to zoom in for a closer look. Stay as long as you like.
Banff: the gondola up Sulphur Mountain
Ride the gondola up the side of the mountain with a camera in your hand. Bighorn sheep and mountain goats stand on the ledges as you climb, and an eagle glides past the window. Snap them. At the top, the whole group lines up for a photo with Banff far below.
Lake Louise, frozen: skating
In winter the lake freezes solid and becomes one of the most famous outdoor rinks anywhere, with the glacier at the far end and the grand old hotel on the shore. In the game the whole lake is yours. Skate the length of it under falling snow, hit the jump ramps and spin in the air, shoot pucks into the hockey nets, and stop at the stand for a hot chocolate. (You'll pay for it with a little money math.)
Lake Louise in summer: the canoe
In summer the same lake turns that impossible turquoise, and you paddle it in a red canoe past other canoes, visitors on the shore and wildlife on the banks.
Jasper: a night at camp
The trip ends at a campsite outside Jasper. Walk around the camp, cook dinner on the grill and stir a pot of chili, roast marshmallows over the fire, set up the sleeping bags in the tent, and then lie back and look up.
Jasper National Park is one of the largest dark-sky preserves in the world, and the camp has a real night sky. Every star is in the place it truly is over Jasper on a summer or a winter night. Swipe to look around, tap a star, and the game tells you what it is: the North Star, the Big Dipper and how it points north, Orion's belt, Vega and the Summer Triangle. A little compass shows which way you're facing.
And somebody else is on the trip
Keep your eyes open. There is a large, friendly, very hairy local who turns up at the hot springs, waves from the mountainside, goes skating, and swims laps in the lake. If you're kind, he might even come to dinner.
Why we made it this way
Math practice usually looks like a worksheet, or an app that turns a sum into a timer. We wanted the opposite: math that matters to what happens next, in a place worth being.
A child who steers into 36 + 19 = 55 to reach the hot springs remembers the hot springs. They also, quietly, get a lot of practice. Twenty questions a trip, every one of them a fork in the road.
It also gives a family something to do together. One person drives, everyone in the room calls out the answer, and somebody always wants to stop at the gondola.
Things parents ask
What grades is it for? Grade 1 to Grade 8. Pick the grade when you set off. Each grade has its own run of lessons: get 16 of the 20 forks right on the first try and your next trip moves on to the next lesson. Now and then a question brings back an earlier lesson, so it sticks.
Does my child need an account? No. Children never give us a name, an email or anything else about themselves. Progress and settings live on your own device and are never sent anywhere.
Is it safe for kids? Yes. There is no chat and no talking to strangers, and nothing about your child is collected.
What device do I need? Any recent phone, tablet or computer. The road and the adventures are full 3D, so the first visit takes a moment to load.
Summer or winter? Your choice when you set off. Winter brings snow on the road and skating on Lake Louise. Summer brings the canoe.
Pack the car
You don't need a passport, a park pass or a full tank of gas. Just a phone, a few people who like to shout answers, and about half an hour.
Start the road trip, and wave to the Sasquatch for us.
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