4 of us fly from Manchester England on Sunday 26 August 2007 at 1045,and arrive in Calgary at 1235 26 august 2007.

We are all 60 years old and quite fit we go for regular jogging sessions and walks.

We plan to stay in calgary for 2 days,then hire a MPV,and eventually arrive at friends who live on Vancouver island.

We wish to spend 3 days in Vancouver before going to Vancouver Island on Sat 8 September. we plan to stay on the island untill the 13 Sept when we will fly back to the UK from Vancouver

Could someone please suggest an Itinery to get us from calgary to Vancouver from the 28 august 2007 t0 the 5 Sept 2007,(9 Days) best rout to take, places of interest, best places to stop over and for how long,suggested accommodation along the way.

Also as we shall be collecting our MPV from downtown Calgary (Hertz) could someone suggest accommodation in downtown calgary,any help in planning this trip would be greatly recieved.We want to see as much as possible but have possibly have 3 or 4 stopovers during the 9 days.We are planning on spending £60- $120 CD per room per night.











































Thanks John Hough

hough - I'm not trying to avoid responding to your post, but Judy_in_Calgary (as the name suggests) is a wealth of information for what you want. My family has been going to Canada for decades, but for detailed info on routes, accommodations, etc Judy is hard to beat. If you'll do a search under her name, you'll find more information than you can assimilate.

If you have time whilst in Calgary I can recommend one of my best ever experiences of travelling, visit Drumheller and the dinosaur museum, it is truly unbelievable. Also an area called the Hoodoos, like nothing else I have seen before, an incredible landscape. It will be so different from Manchester believe me.
As for the trip Calgary to Vancouver, Banff of course is a must, three days there including taking in the glacier and Lake Louise. Kelowna is a nice fruit growing town, big lake so you could follow that route and overnight there. Vancouver Island is fabulous, I would extend it to seven days there and take seven days to get from Calgary to Vancouver. The Calgary museum is well worth a visit but so also is the Victoria one. Your friends will take you to Buchart Gardens no doubt and take a day trip to one of the smaller islands, probably Saltspring island, it is fantastic. Whatever you do, Canada is a beautiful country everywhere, enjoy yourselves. I like to use Travelodge if in a convenient location but all the main chains are everywhere, put up a search for hotels on Wotif.com or hotelclub.com for starters.

To KathNZ

Thanks for your very helpfull info,havevyou trasveled from calgary to vanvouver?

John, you might consider this itinerary:

Sun, Aug 26 – Land in Calgary. Do the downtown walk suggested on my website:

http://tinyurl.com/2nzu3x

Mon, Aug 27 – Day trip to Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller. I warmly endorse KathyNZ’s recommendation of this place.

Tue, Aug 28 – Drive to Japser

Wed, Aug 29 – Explore Jasper’s environs.

Thu, Aug 30 – Drive to Banff or Lake Louise,

Fri, Aug 31 – Explore the Banff / Lake Louise area.

Sat, Sept 1 – Explore the Banff / Lake Louise area.

To see what there is to see and do in Jasper, along the Icefields Parkway, in Lake Louise and in Banff, look at the Itineraries section of my website:

http://tinyurl.com/35jzr8

Sun, Sept 2 – Drive to the Okanagan Valley (Penticton or thereabouts).

Mon, Sept 3 – Explore the Okanagan area (the pleasant lake, the vineyards, the fruit orchards, etc.).

WARNING : This day will be the Labour Day public holiday (like a bank holiday in the UK). Resort areas will be packed with tourists. The first draft that I did had you traveling from the Okanagan to Victoria on this day. However, I revised the plan, because the roads will be busy on this day, and so will the ferries,

Tue, Sept 4 – Drive to Tsawwassen. Catch the ferry to Swartz Bay and drive on to Victoria.

You haven’t said where your friends live, and I’m just making a wild assumption that they live in Victoria.

Wed, Sept 5 - Victoria

Thu, Sept 6 – Victoria

Fri, Sept 7 – Tofino – It’s located on the wild west coast of Vancouver Island, and is an awesome area for whale watching, kayaking, walking in old growth temperate rainforests, etc.

Sat, Sept 8 - Tofino

Sun, Sept 9 - Tofino

Mon, Sept 10 – Drive from Tofino to Nanaimo, catch the ferry from Departure Bay to Horseshoe Bay, and drive on to Vancouver. Expect this to take at least 6 hours – any maybe more – from door to door.

Tue, Sept 11 - Vancouver

Wed, Sept 12 – Vancouver

To find out what to do and see in Vancouver, see this page of my website:

http://tinyurl.com/2cvee7

Thu, Sept 13 – Fly back to UK

More in next post .......

ACCOMMODATION

C$120 is a very low budget for this area.

Low budget hotels in downtown Calgary include the Sandman, Ramada and Holiday Inn. (Make sure you are booking the DOWNTOWN hotels, as each one of these chains has properties elsewhere in Calgary as well.)

Even these so called budget hotels are in the C$150 range on week nights, when business travellers create a demand.

However, you can get quite an upscale hotel room in Calgary for around C$90 on a weekend. You might try to see if you could get the Marriott or the Delta Bow Valley for a good price on the Sunday night.

In Jasper you can find very nice private home accommodations (PHAs) in your stated price range. You can search for a PHA that has the features you want at:

http://www.stayinjasper.com/showinns.asp

In my opinion, you should avoid Jasper East and Hinton, as they are too far away to serve as central bases from which to explore Jasper National Park.

In the Banff / Canmore area, you can find a B&B in the C$120 range. If you were to stay at a hotel or motel in that price range, it would be a bare bones, basic property.

In Banff you might be able to achieve your price target if the 4 of you shared a self-catering suite (flat) at Douglas Fir Resort, Tunnel Mountain Resort or Hidden Ridge Resort.

A quite average hotel in the Okanagan Valley costs in the neighbourhood of C$170.

To get a good Vancouver hotel at a reasonable price, you might consider bidding on Priceline. The strategy for doing that is the subject of research in its own right.

You also can try the hotel websites that KathyNZ mentioned, not only for your Vancouver accommodation but also for accommodation at other destinations.

When it comes to Vancouver, I suggest that you stay downtown or in the West End, a mixed-density neighbourhood that is located between downtown and Stanley Park.

The good news on the budget front is that you can enjoy the Canadian Rockies enormously even if you do not ride the gondolas (cable cars) up mountains, if you do not catch cruises across lakes, etc. The mountains are very enjoyable even if all you do is walk and hike and take in the fabulous scenery.

You also can save money if you travel with a collapsible cooler and have picnic lunches on the way. We do that all the time, and some of our favourite "restaurants" in the Rockies have been the places at which we have stopped for picnics.

More ...........

VANCOUVER

I have deliberately placed Vancouver at the end of your trip. The reason is that, if you will be flying home from Vancouver, it is safer not to be catching the ferry from Vancouver Island to the mainland on the very day of your flight. The ferries mostly are reliable, and usually are on time. But there’s always that chance, however miniscule it may be, that the ferry may let you down.

WEATHER

You could experience a great variety of weather on this trip. In the mountains you have a reasonable chance of encountering 20 deg C days and 5 deg C nights. However, you could experience day time temperatures as high as 30 deg C and nights that are a couple of degrees below freezing, with perhaps a dusting of snow. The TIPS section of my website has suggestions about what clothing to pack:

http://tinyurl.com/npoh2

The British Columbia coast has a climate that is more akin to that of the UK, so you don’t need any explanation for that.

RENTAL CAR

It would be more convenient to pick up your rental vehicle from the Calgary Airport. The Hertz location in downtown Calgary is not especially close to the Sandman, Ramada and Holiday Inn. Hertz is towards the east end of downtown, whereas those hotels are towards the west end. One thing that would help you, however, is that the use of the C-Train is free in the downtown core, along 7th Avenue South. You could use the train to get from your hotel to Hertz.

If you were to stay at the Delta Bow Valley, you would be close to the downtown Hertz location. The Marriott, Hyatt and Westin all would be within walking distance too.

NATIONAL PARK ENTRY FEES

Read this page of my website to understand what national park entry fees you will need to pay:

http://tinyurl.com/2l8lqu

If you follow my suggested itinerary exactly, you will travel through not only the Rocky Mountain national parks but also Pacific Rim National Park between Tofino and Ucluelet. So you probably will reach the break-even point at which it will be worth your while to buy a 365-day pass for your group. You reach that break-even point if you spend 7 or more days in national parks. If you’ll be spending less than 7 days in national parks, it will be cheaper to pay for the exact number of days.

Hope you have fun. Over and out.

Judy thanks for all your help the info was first class,also thanks to everybody who responded tp my request

john hough