Phil & Paula's Canadian Adventure: Part Three

As the saying goes "all good things must come to an end"... but! We still have the final week of Phil & Paula's Canadian adventure to relive. These have all truly been memories made, that will last a lifetime. If their trip has inspired you to look at Canada for a bucket-list journey, then please do speak to our team to arrage a bespoke trip with the lovely people at Canadian Affair.

When we finished Part Two, Phil and Paula had just been living the dream and conquering fears with white-water rafting in Clearwater, so let's get back to the RV and find out where the next stop on their journey was...

Day 15. Clearwater to Revelstoke

Before departing delightful Clearwater, we took a boat out and had a quick row on the tranquil calm waters of Hallamore Lake - all before breakfast! It was sublime and eerily peaceful - a beautiful start to the day ahead.

Katie (our host) afforded us a site visit of some of the lodges at Alpine Meadows along with a quick look at the new “Store” that is now open on site. To explain... the drive into town is 20 minutes each way, so having a store for supplies is a real Godsend for guests. The 3-bedroom double height lodges are incredible with views of the lake. In fact, all of the accommodation is of a very high standard, and the team at Alpine Meadows simply cannot do enough for you. If you are looking for somewhere to stay with fabulous watersports, in a very tranquil setting, then I can’t recommend Alpine Meadows highly enough.

Note: If you are in a large RV, then on exiting the resort you must go right and back into town to pick up highway 5. If you go left, there’s a ferry across the river, but it cannot take large or XL RV’s.

The plan was to stop in Kamloops for lunch, but to be honest... there's not a lot going on in Kamloops. There are better places to grab a bite to eat en route, so my suggestion is to carry on.

After a 4 and a half hour drive from Clearwater we arrived at Revelstoke and got hooked up, got the gas griddle out, ate like kings again and opened a bottle of red. What’s not to like about this lifestyle?! A game of UNO and off to bed…

Day 16. Revelstoke to Kelowna

Disaster strikes - our RV has a technical issue! The sliding side will not fully retract, so we’ve limped the RV to Kelowna (skipped the morning in Revelstoke - gutted!) to enable the Fraserway support team to get someone out to look at it for us. Unfortunately the fault means an end to our adventure in the RV. We abandoned the RV in the car park with Fraserway, and checked into the Delta Marriott Resort in readiness for our wine tasting tour in the morning.

This is a great place to stop, but just to be clear, if you have an RV, you need to park directly across the road from the hotel and use the “indigo geo” parking app. For an RV it's approx $103 CA per 24 hours, so make sure you factor this cost this in when planning. There's an abundance of watersports available here, or you can take a bike around the lake. We’ve found the staff to be very helpful and prices for food and wine are not too bad at all. 

Day 17. Kelowna Wine Tasting day

We were met by our guide from Okanagan Wine Country Tours, who collected us from the hotel and took us to visit four vineyards in the comfort of a luxury minivan, over the space of approximately 4 hours. We had the opportunity to witness some of the challenges affecting the owners of the vineyards, especially harsh winter spells where some vines had been completely destroyed. It was heartbreaking to see, especially as it takes 3-5 years to get fruit from the newly planted vines. 

It was a very interesting tour and some of the vineyards were (shall we say) slightly more professional than others, but our recommendation is to make the guides / company aware of your wine preferences before you travel so they can tailor make the tour for you. There was a lot of Pinot Noir on our tour, so if that's not your bag, then it's better to speak up before setting out on a tour of wine that you won't drink.

Day 18. Hope (or not as it turns out)

As we mentioned previously, our RV was broken and un-repairable so we made the decision not to stay over in Hope, but to at least call in for lunch on the way to a hastily arranged extra night in Vancouver. A short taxi ride to Kelowna Airport to pick up our SUV hire car and we were off.

We couldn’t really get a true feel for Hope other than there is a superb family restaurant / diner there called “Home Restaurant” and the food was amazing. They make homemade apple or cherry crumbles for example and this eatery quite regularly has a line of people waiting for a table - and I can see why!

Fed and watered we continued our 2-hour drive to Vancouver and arrived shortly after 7pm, thus avoiding Vancouver's rush hour traffic. We stayed in the hotel's “Moxie’s” bar for the evening.

Day 19 & 20 Vancouver

We dropped the car off downtown at AVIS and checked into our pre-arranged hotel “The Sutton Place” for 2 nights.

Our plan was to see as much as we could and get a real feel for Vancouver. We started with the subway and a 15-minute 6-stop journey to Templeton, for the McArthurGlenn shopping outlet. After getting shopping out of our system, we jumped on the Skytrain to take us back to our hotel. It's just a short walk from the Vancouver City Central subway (Skytrain) stop.

Celebrating a birthday we indulged in Lobster and Oysters - Wow! What a treat, it was delicious.

A good night's sleep and it was up early and off to explore the city via the Blue Hop-On-Hop-Off Bus, which we'd pre-booked at a cost of approx £33pp. 

We started with a stop at popular Granville Island and found a nice Marina with a very interesting food market; which was ideal for a couple of hours before jumping back on to go to Stanley Park. The bus takes you right into the “Park” and we had lunch there before taking a short walk around before deciding we’d go back to the hotel to get ready for Jazz Night at Frankie's Jazz Club.

This is an amazing venue and we had the best night of Jazz and dinner - I recommend booking for 7.30pm or 7.45pm as the shows normally start at 8pm.

This was definitely the way to close the trip and bid good night to the final chapter on our Canadian adventure.

Day 21 - Flying home

Well, I guess you could say that’s a wrap!

Fair to say that Phil & Paula had the most amazing time away, so much so that it inspired Phil to write an ode to the trip, that rather succinctly sums it all up:

From the old-world charm to new lands afar,
Four  friends embarked beneath the North Star.
Paula & Phil, John & Ali,
Crossed the ocean, wide and free.
 
First, Toronto’s towers they spied,
By Lake Ontario's expansive tide.
Then, to Niagara’s thunderous falls,
Where water dances and nature calls.
 
A flight to Calgary, spirits high,
Their adventure under the vast Alberta sky.
In a campervan, they found their steed,
To roam the Rockies, vast and freed.
 
Through Banff they drove, with peaks in view,
Lake Louise shimmered in a hue of blue.
Jasper’s wilds whispered ancient tales,
In the heart of nature, grand and frail.
 
Each night by the campfire’s warm embrace,
Cooking on the barbecue, a rugged grace.
Swatting mosquitoes in the dusky air,
In the wild, together, an unmatched pair.
 
Clearwater called with a daring quest,
White water rafting, putting bonds to the test.
Through rapids wild, they laughed and screamed,
In thrilling moments, vivid as they dreamed.
 
Finally, Vancouver's city lights shone,
A gentle end to the wilds they'd roamed.
Best friends, four, with spirits melded,
In memories’ book, forever welded.
 
Living the dream, across each mile,
Together, weaving dreams worthwhile.
In the heart of Canada’s embrace,
They found laughter, love, and friendship’s grace.

Don't forget... if Phil & Paula's Canadian adventure has inspired you to start planning your own trip, then pop in to see our travel specialists on Highfield Road, or give us a call on 01253 40 11 33.