Wild North America: ranches, wilderness lodges and coastlines

North America's grandest hotels are mostly in its cities. Its most rewarding places to stay are not. They sit at the ends of gravel roads and floatplane routes, in cattle valleys, canyon country and on the rock of the North Atlantic, and they tend to share three traits: the landscape is the whole point, a guide is part of the stay, and the season is shorter than you might expect. Plan around those three things and a trip here comes together far more easily.

The ranch: the West's all-inclusive

The guest ranch is North America's answer to the safari lodge, with meals, drinks and activities folded into one rate and days built around horses, rivers and open country. The Ranch at Rock Creek owns the land on both banks for four miles of its namesake creek in a Montana valley, with around thirty places to stay across six thousand acres. Summer brings fly fishing on private water and riding; in winter the same ground turns to Nordic skiing, snowmobiles and a rope-tow ski hill, and a restored 1880s barn holds a saloon and bowling lanes. Missoula, the nearest commercial airport, is about ninety minutes away.

The Lodge & Spa at Brush Creek Ranch spreads across over thirty thousand acres of Wyoming sagebrush between two mountain ranges, and is as much a working ranch as a resort, with its own creamery, greenhouse, Wagyu herd and distillery. The main lodge is open all year, while its adults-only outpost, Magee Homestead, runs from May to mid-October.

Desert and the Pacific edge

Amangiri folds its pale concrete wings around a rock escarpment on nine hundred acres of southern Utah, with a pool that wraps a sandstone outcrop and a spa that draws on Navajo healing traditions. Guides lead slot-canyon hikes and via ferrata climbs. It is the most expensive stay in this guide, from around US$3,900 a night including meals for two, and it is best in spring and autumn; high summer regularly passes 38C.

On the California coast, Post Ranch Inn sits on a ridge dropping almost sheer to the Pacific at Big Sur, its tree houses and grass-roofed ocean houses built so that nothing rises above the trees. It is adults-only, has no televisions, and its rate includes breakfast and a programme of guided hikes and stargazing. Winter storms can close sections of Highway 1, so check the road before driving down.

Further north, Clayoquot Wilderness Lodge is a camp of canvas tents on cedar platforms at the head of a Vancouver Island estuary, reached by floatplane or boat from Tofino. Guides go out for black bears foraging along the shore at low tide, for whales, both grey and humpback, out at sea, and for the late-summer salmon run. Stays are sold as packages of three to ten nights covering meals, drinks and guiding, and the season runs only from late May to late September.

Photographs: Wikimedia Commons contributors — select to enlarge for full credits.

The Rockies and the far north

Post Hotel & Spa has grown from a 1940s ski lodge into one of the most respected addresses in the Canadian Rockies while staying small. Set on the Pipestone River near Lake Louise village, it keeps a wine cellar of around 30,000 bottles, and puts Moraine Lake, the Plain of Six Glaciers and the Icefields Parkway within reach in summer, with the Lake Louise ski area minutes away in winter.

In the Yukon, Southern Lakes Resort sets log cabins and lakeview villas where Nares Lake meets Tagish Lake, an hour from Whitehorse. Summer means canoeing through long evenings when it stays light almost until midnight; winter brings dog sledding and snowshoes, and the northern lights can be seen from about mid-August to March. At an indicative US$220 a night, it is also the gentlest price in this guide.

The Atlantic provinces

Fogo Island Inn stands on stilts over bare rock on an island off Newfoundland's north-east coast, a long white slab facing the open Atlantic. It operates as a social enterprise, with surpluses returning to the island community, and each guest is paired with an islander who acts as host on walks and visits to the outport settlements. Rates include meals, there is a three-night minimum, and the inn opens from April to October; icebergs pass in late spring, whales in summer.

In the forests of southwest Nova Scotia, Trout Point Lodge is a hand-built spruce lodge on the Tusket River inside a designated starlight reserve, where the night sky is about as dark as eastern North America allows. Days are for canoeing, forest walks and the wood-fired sauna on the riverbank, and the season runs from late May to the start of November.

Planning around short seasons

Several of these places close for half the year or more, so the calendar shapes the trip. June to mid-September is the only window when all of them are open. Autumn suits the ranches and the desert, and the Atlantic provinces until their late-season closures; winter belongs to the Rockies, the Yukon's aurora and ranch-country snow. Distances are continental, so pair places by region, such as Montana with Wyoming or Vancouver Island with the Rockies, rather than trying to cross from coast to coast.

When comparing prices, compare what is included. Rock Creek, Brush Creek, Clayoquot and Fogo Island fold meals and much else into their rates, while Post Hotel and Southern Lakes are closer to conventional hotel pricing. The figures in the directory are indicative only.