Drive through the Skeena Valley for the best bear-spotting in BC

Strap on your boots, slap on some sunnies and take firm grip of the bear spray - you're in for the ride of your life!

The Canadian province with the mostest, British Columbia boasts the best ski resorts, the lushest rainforests, the widest trees, the warmest weather, the largest bears, the most laid-back people and the fiercest waves lashing its Pacific coast.

"Super, Natural British Columbia" - the slogan dreamed up by the tourism authority - doesn't even come close to describing the awesome scale and beauty of this diverse destination.

Start your journey in Vancouver - one of the world's most stunning cities - where snowcapped mountains dwarf the glittering downtown skyscrapers.

From here, jump a ferry or catch a sea plane to the 450 kilometre-long Vancouver Island. Here, if a refined afternoon tea in Victoria - BC's oh-so-English capital - doesn't hit the spot, then rainforest-flanked surf beaches and whale-watching in Tofino surely will.

From the northern tip of Vancouver Island you could catch a ferry along the legendary Inside Passage route. This will take you past the Great Bear Rainforest - home of the rare white Kermode or 'spirit' bear - before docking in Prince Rupert.

Alternatively, if you're developing a taste for island life, you could escape to the lush Gulf Islands - scattered between mainland BC and Vancouver Island.

Back in Vancouver, you could strike two hours' north along the scenic Sea to Sky Highway for the resort town of Whistler, where the combined Whistler-Blackcomb ski resorts offer the best skiing and snowboarding in North America.

A totem pole and long house in 'Ksan Historical Village in northern BC.

Leaving Vancouver and travelling east, you could also take the well-worn route along the Trans-Canada Highway (the world's longest national highway extending from Victoria in BC to St John's in Newfoundland), taking rest stops in the resort town of Harrison Hot Springs and again in mountain-ringed Hope.

East of here, the road carves into BC's dry interior and the wineries and orchards of the Okanagan Valley.

Heading east again, you hit British Columbia's best-kept secret - the Kootenays region, a liberal enclave of bohemian settlements and astonishing natural beauty.

Sadly, a pine beetle infestation (thought to be exacerbated by global warming) has devastated vast chunks of forests in interior and northern BC with infested pine needles turning a dirty shade of orange.

Northern British Columbia is another world altogether. Remote, wild and often unforgiving in its isolation, it is a place where ''down the road'' could well just as well mean hundreds of kilometres away.

From Dawson Creek (412km north of industrial Prince George), the legendary Alaska Highway winds north past nondescript oil boom towns into the Yukon Territory before the road grinds to a halt in Fairbanks, Alaska.

If you want the sample the best that northern BC has to offer, explore the lush, misty wilderness of the Skeena Valley which stretches 150km east of the mountain-ringed port town of Prince Rupert. Whether you catch the Greyhound bus, riding ViaRail's Skeena train (between Prince Rupert and Jasper in Alberta) or steering your own wheels along the Yellowhead Highway, you're very likely to spot bears here, ambling across the road, running alongside rushing rivers or disappearing hastily into the forest.

From Prince Ruper,t flightseeing tours are offered out to the Khuzeymateen Grizzly Bear Sanctuary, a coastal valley 45km north of the town.

From Prince Rupert it is a sea plane ride or ferry trip 150km west across the formidable Hecate Strait to the remote archipelago of Haida Gwaii where if you haven't already made up your mind to permanently relocate to British Columbia, you certainly will now.