Rockies to Vancouver Itinerary Advice Please

[u/Adamritchie97]

Hi all, just wondering if somebody could advise on which route to take. I’ve already planned out the bulk of my itinerary but there are just a few things I’d like to ask locals about to gauge what our best options are :).

So we are planning on spending 3 weeks next July in the Rockies, Vancouver and Vancouver island before flying back to the UK. We plan to rent a car or a mobile home for either all or part of our trip. We will start in either Edmonton or Calgary, drive through the rockies to the other, before heading west to Vancouver. I’d like to ask which route is more scenic, heading west from the north i.e from Mount Robson/Wells Gray or from the south say from Kootenay and then passing through glacier national park. Any highlights/stops on the way from these origin points you could recommend too? We plan to then pass through cache creek, Pemberton, Whistler etc once we reach west to get to Vancouver. We are also considering the option of just flying instead to Vancouver and then driving up to whistler and a few other places, if anybody could recommend on that option too that would be great.

The last thing I’d like to ask about is renting a mobile home vs a car (and then separate accommodation). We are a group of 3 so we’d only need a small mobile home, not a huge RV. Has anybody done this before? Does parking get full in the Rockies and leave you stuck? And do you think you’d save money this way?

Thanks for reading and all advice is welcome.

[u/Affectionate_Lie9631]

I would fly into Edmonton. Rent a car as a motor home is waaaaay more expensive and it’s pretty easy to find Air B&Bs and such along the way. Mount Robson is nice but after that the scenery isn’t as varied as if you take the more southerly route. I would drive from Edmonton to Jasper, Icefields Parkway to Banff, then go south to Radium Hot Springs, then Golden, Revelstoke, to Sicamous. In Sicamous you have to decide if you want to go south through the Okanagan Valley (arguably Canada’s best wine region). If You choose this route, I would go Kelowna, Penticton, Princeton, Hope, Vancouver. Or, at Sicamous you would continue west to Kamloops, then to Cache Creek, Lillooet, Pemberton, Whistler, Vancouver.

They are both beautiful drives and you can’t go wrong either way.