How to plan one week in the Canadian Rockies

what kind of tourist are you, I grew up going to both jasper and Banff. they are both tourist areas but jasper is a little more low keyed, having said that both are great. what you have to decide is how long do you want to spend in the town and how long out of the town. you can spend two days walking around looking at all the little shops downtown Banff and doing the gondola and sulphur mountain hot springs, Jasper I find there is less tourist things to do but it is a nice little town and you can spend a day downtown and a day around town. ice field parkway is nice, what I did with the kids is we camped in Banff for 4 days and spent a day doing the sights on the lower half of the parkway, then we drove up to jasper and send a day on the upper half of the parkway and 2 days in the jasper area.

if you want you can also spend a day driving up to Lake Louise (very nice lake) and there are lots of lakes and hiking in the area which all add time.