Ride with us, as we take a 3-week drive through Canada and the USA, searching for deep snow and hoping for a white Christmas.

Read what happened during Week 1, here, and the final Week 3 blog here.

Canada/USA Road Trip: Day 8 – Nanaimo/Chilliwack/Hope

It’s another ferry ride today, this time getting onboard in central Nanaimo at Departure Bay, and heading across to the “Interior” (as the locals say) of Canada, and landing at Horseshoe Bay.

There’s another C$120 to pay for the car and two passengers for the 1.5-hour trip, and it’s the same company running this ferry – BC Ferries – so the food is the same too. Still, again, it’s a quick load up, and we’re off. The seas are rougher this time around, but we land on time and the ferry is unloaded at lightning speed.

We hit the highway, down towards Northern Vancouver, then split off onto the Trans Canada Highway to head northeast.

It was time for gas, so we pulled into Abbotsford for fuel and brunch. Because it was so close, my wife decided we simply had to head into the Walmart, that was basically next door to the restaurant. This is our second venture into Walmart this trip, and I’m still seeing very high prices for everything. The price of food is so high here, I wonder how some families cope with putting food on the table, let alone the price of gas – like the USA, there are a LOT of V8 pick-up trucks and cars out there, all sucking down 20L/100km of gas (well, around that much anyway).

Back on the road, and my wife declares we have to visit the town of Ch’illiwack. Apparently, the name Ch’illiwack is derived from the Halqemeylem word Ts’elxwéyeqw  which means going back upstream, as far as you can go in a canoe.

There is a book store there, my wife says, and we have to visit it. I’m pretty sure the main reason we have to visit this book store is that they have resident cats. The store of The Bookman in Ch’illiwack has at least two cats that generally just lie around the shop, waiting for pats from customers, as well as over half a million new and used books for sale. As you can imagine, those cats get plenty of pats, with all those crazy cat ladies with a book fetish visiting the store.

Cats+books=commercial success

Around 90% of people in the store are female, and the store is pretty damn big. There are nooks and crannies everywhere, and books stored all over the place. But it’s beautifully laid out, everything is categorised well, and there’s bright lighting everywhere, so it’s easy to find what you are looking for. All this store needs is to knock down a wall and put in a café, and they’d triple their income.

I wander down one aisle and find two shelves loaded with ‘staff picks’. There are 22 names here, giving you an idea of just how big this business is. After a lot of browsing, it’s an obligatory pat of a ginger cat on the way out, and we head into Ch’illiwack central.

The town’s businesses have created an attraction of some Christmas lights and large structures, like arches, a hockey stick and puck, and steel peppermint sticks with lights all over them. It’s selfie paradise, there are shops lining the pedestrian-only lane, and the shops are pumping.

After Ch’illiwack, it’s a short 30-minute drive to Hope, British Columbia. We visited Hope 12 years ago, and were simply passing through the town when we realised that it was the filming location for the original Rambo First Blood movie. We promised ourselves to return, and that’s what we are doing. Tomorrow, we’ll be doing a tour of filming locations of the movie, before driving on to Kamloops for the night.

We check into our hotel, and are pretty disappointed that there is no local TV channel playing Rambo over and over, but we’d seen it the day before we left New Zealand, so are all prepared for our tour tomorrow.

Canada/USA Road Trip: Day 9 – Hope/Fraser Canyon/Kamloops

It’s 2 degrees when we go outside today, and won’t go above 5 all day. All this week, Hope has a high of 5 degrees.

Parking in town, and for the first time I can really hear the winter tyres on the cars driving around the town – they’re much louder than summer tyres. On many of the highways here, it’s the law to have winter tyres on the car during the winter months.

Breakfast today was at Rolly’s Restaurant. It’s a one-minute drive from our hotel, and the food is excellent. We’re having issues with some (well, most) Canadians understanding our accent, even when we speak slowly. We get there in the end, but some days it’s a mission.

After breakfast, we download the free app that guides you around the township, looking at the different filming locations of Rambo First Blood. It starts at the point where the sheriff picks up Rambo, and moves on from there. Some of them are almost token, like the place where they built a gas station, so Rambo could blow it up. Some are great too, and the town also has two wooden statues, one of Rambo and one of the sheriff. Try as we might, we simply couldn’t find them. After asking at a fudge store, we find out they put them away for the winter.

It’s amazing that although Rambo First Blood is now 42 years old, the town is still cashing in on the fact that it was filmed there. Next time you watch the movie, look out for the ‘Hope’ signs on screen, you will see some of them with ‘Hope WA’, trying to pretend the movie is set in Hope, Washington state and not Canada.

After spending an hour or so walking around the town, we hit the road north and into the Fraser Canyon. We’d be spending most of today on this road, all 270km of it from Hope to Cache Creek, where we will turn right to go to Kamloops.

The scenery is absolutely stunning, and we go through the first of 7 tunnels in the first few kilometres of the road. Around some corners, we see 6 distinctly separate waterfalls in our view.

The first of 7 road tunnels for the day

After a while, we get to Hells Gate. This is an ‘airtram’ that goes down into the valley, to the bottom. It’s 1,000 feet down, but Hells Gate is shut for the winter. The airtram was built in 1970, and each airtram weighs over 4,000kg when loaded up. At the base landing, water runs through the narrow gap at around 200 million gallons per minute, which would be incredible to see. We’ll have to plan to come back on another trip, when it’s open.

We get to Cache Creek, grab some Tim Horton’s coffee and turn right. It’s only 30 minutes to Kamloops from there, and more stunning scenery to go past.

Closed for the winter, like so many other attractions

We are still loving the Mazda CX-70 as a road-trip vehicle; plenty of space, and it’s whisper quiet nearly all the time. But wind out that 3.3-litre straight six turbo motor and it sounds delicious. It’s not perfect, though, and has the same issue we’ve found on some New Zealand Mazda models. When using adaptive cruise control and going around even gentle bends, the car slows down for the corners. This is fine, and many cars do this now. However, the CX-70 slows down when you get halfway around the corners, and that’s the worst time to slow the car, as it upsets the handling. I’m not sure of Mazda’s logic around this, but it’s a bit disconcerting, and we really noticed it on the drive today.

Canada/USA Road Trip: Day 10 – Kamloops to Golden

Today would be an easy drive from Kamloops to Golden, normally only a four-hour drive. There must have been snow overnight, as the CX-70 had a reasonable dusting over it, as had a lot of cars driving through the town. It was 2 degrees when we jumped into the car, and would stay around that temperature for a couple of hours, and it started to snow while on the move.

Setting the Mazda’s SatNav, once on the Trans-Canada Highway, it was a straight 356km drive to Golden, so we could just sit back and not worry about turning anywhere.

Standard sort of view for the whole day

The scenery out of Kamloops and for the first 90 minutes was once again stunning, with high mountains, lashings of snow and endless vistas. Truly spectacular from the car. We passed a few trains on the way, with some of them measuring over 2km long – for a single train. Some of them were double-decker too, adding to the perception of being even longer. They are something to see, and can wind on and on around bends to the point where you can’t see the end of them.

Not really sure what this sign is supposed to say, other than “fix me”

Time for lunch at a small town diner. We pulled into Malakwa Café, just off the highway in the tiny town of Malakwa. It’s all homemade food here, even the French Fries. I ordered a cheeseburger with French Fries, all up at C$11.50. It was excellent, and one of the best burgers I have had for a long time. As usual, there’s endless coffee, with the waitress refilling our cups without even being asked.

Along the way, we stopped for a toilet break at the Last Spike. This is the spot where the last spike was driven in, to complete the trans-Canada railway system, back in 1885 at Eagle Pass in the Monashee Mountains west of Revelstoke, British Columbia.

The track was only completed in a rush the night before the ceremony, so time was tight. When the Director of the company went to drive in the spike, his aim was off and the spike bent – a little ominous? They replaced the spike with another, and his aim was true the second time.

There’s a monument here as well as some other bits and pieces of history, so it’s worthy of a stop if you have time. It was -2 degrees when we visited, so we didn’t stop for too long.

Monument for the last spike

Arriving in the town of Revelstoke, it was time for another tank of fuel, this time paying C$1.79/litre (equivalent to NZ$2.25), so it’s less than $100 to fill the tank from near empty.

Gassing up in Revelstoke

Another few hours’ driving, and we arrived at Golden, still in the province of British Columbia. We’re staying at the Glenogle Mountain Lodge and Spa, 400 metres above the town of Golden. Like some Stephen King novel, we are the only guests at the entire place, which feels a little spooky. But the hosts are very welcoming, and the venue is amazing. It’s nestled away in the hills, and the snow surrounding it looks incredible.

The owners, Doris and Norbert, built the lodge and its five chalets by hand, all while running their bakery business in Golden. It’s an achievement in itself, and they have done a brilliant job of creating a destination venue.

After checking in, I realise the entire lodge is very warm inside. Doris goes on to say they have a boiler that runs off firewood, and that heats all the buildings and the water, too. It’s toasty warm inside and feels almost surreal that they could heat this huge building and the others, all from firewood. That is, until I actually see the size of the logs they are putting into the boiler – they’re about a metre long.

Glenogle Mountain Lodge and Spa

Canada/USA Road Trip: Day 11 – Golden

At breakfast, we look out the windows to see it has snowed overnight, and the CX-70 has a decent cover on it. There are wild deer roaming the woods, and it’s nice to be in the warm lodge while watching them.

Today, we’d be spending the day in Golden, and then chilling out at the mountain lodge. It takes minutes to get into the township of Golden, where my wife spies a café that also has books. They might as well just throw up a big arrow for her and be done with it. Bacchus Café is well laid out, and up some ancient stairs is a small café with 6 tables.

We order coffee, and it’s nice to see they have actual milk, and not that terrible powered creamer stuff that my wife loathes. Of course, she buys some books and of course I remind her that our suitcases have limited space.

After coffee, it’s off to buy some snow boots. It’s minus 5 degrees Celsius outside, and my feet are freezing. With plans of a walk around the lodge later, I don’t fancy getting my only pair of sneakers soaking wet.

After a bit of cruising around Golden, it’s back to Glenogle Lodge. Heading into the snow, it’s knee-high and some drifts are right up to my waist. Thoughts of getting wet are unfounded; this is a different sort of snow than we are used to, and I’m not wet in the slightest. Even my snow boots are dry to the touch – it’s a weird thing.

We head off to walk the loop road that has private homes along it. I spy an all-wheel drive Toyota MPV, stuck. The owner is there with his pick-up, and we help him pull the car out. He says it’s almost a weekly event, even with AWD. The Toyota simply hit a patch of ice and slid into the ditch, damaging the front.

Walking along more, most homes (probably all of them) have either a Bobcat or a tractor with a snow blade for clearing their driveways; the snow is thick, and people still have to get to work – or tow their car out of a ditch.

Since it’s dark at 4pm, we head back to the lodge to chill some more, and enjoy New Year’s Eve, even though we are still the only guests at the lodge.

Canada/USA Road Trip: Day 11 – Golden to Jasper

It’s New Year’s Day, and there’s been some decent snowfall overnight. It’s only -7 degrees, but it feels so much colder. We head into Golden for a diner breakfast and then hit the road, heading east on the Trans Canada Highway. In a short hour and 65km, we get to Lake Louise.

Overnight snowfall at the lodge

The lake is totally frozen, and is a well-known tourist attraction in the area. The Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise is a hotel that overlooks the lake, and manages activities here, although the public can park nearby and walk onto the lake. It’s a bizarre feeling to walk on a frozen lake, although there is some water flowing under the ice, near the hotel. It’s -16 degrees outside; the last time we were here 12 years ago, it was -28 degrees and our hair started to freeze. Today, it’s bearable, and people are enjoying the fine weather – and the natural ice-skating rink (maintained by the hotel).

After a walk around, we hit the road again and in a few minutes, we make it to the Icefield Parkway. The parkway is a National Park road, so it’s closed to trucks and costs us $22 to go into the park for the day. Really, we’re just using the parkway to get to Jasper, but you can pay monies and use the park, and we do find cars parked at the sides of the road every now and then, most likely people going snow-shoeing (it’s a thing).

Amazing views all day long on the Icefield Parkway

There is no cellphone coverage for the entire parkway, and that’s quite nice – better to soak in the scenery. The road is on the spine of the Canadian Rockies and is rated as one of the world’s best drives.

The parkway is 230km long, meaning it takes us almost into Jasper and takes around 3 hours, with scenic stops. The snowplough has been through already, but there’s still a lot of snow around. Here’s where the Mazda CX-70 continues to impress, with its rock-solid stability on these dodgy roads. So far, there’s not been an “oh shit” moment in the car. As a bonus, we are extremely thankful for the heated seats and me for the heated steering wheel.

Mile after mile, the scenery is breathtaking. I don’t want to say it, but the mountains put our Southern Alps to shame. At one point, we cross from British Columbia and into Alberta, our second province in Canada.

Arriving in Jasper, the temperature has risen to -15, but we decide to have dinner at the hotel and not go outside at all. The poor car is covered in snow, and I hate to think how much extra weight we are carrying.

Canada/USA Road Trip: Day 12 – Jasper to Edmonton

It’s still -15 when we leave Jasper, and not far down the road, we spot wild elk. They’re big beasts, with some deciding they’ll just cross the Trans Canada Highway, and the traffic stops for them. They’d do some serious damage to your car, no doubt. All along the highway today, there are signs reminding drivers to watch out for wild animals. We spot more elk, some deer and also some Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep.

After an hour, we get to the town of Hinton for another diner breakfast at Smitty’s. We went to a Smitty’s in Nanaimo; they make good food, and it’s relatively well-priced.

The drive to Edmonton is pretty straightforward, and straight as well. It’s not quite in a line, but there aren’t many turns. It’s still cold as hell outside, but the temperature does rise to -13 at one point.

After 6 hours on the road (with stops), we get to Edmonton and my wife decides we need to visit West Edmonton Mall, “North America’s largest mall”. With over 800 shops, the mall includes an ice skating rink, a hotel, numerous car dealerships, an indoor electric go-kart track, a theme park with 27 rides, mini golf, a water park, an escape room, a pickleball court, a bowling alley, and a casino – should you have any money left after all that shopping.

We even spot a Michael Hill jewellery shop there, along with thousands of people. Mind you, it’s -18 degrees outside and toasty warm inside, so who can blame them for not wanting to leave?

Canada/USA Road Trip: Day 13 – Edmonton to Lethbridge

Today is a pretty simple day: drive to Lethbridge. We were planning to stay in Calgary, but we’ve got plenty of time to go a bit further today. Lethbridge is the fourth-biggest city in Alberta province, so we should be able to find accommodation there pretty easily.

It’s -22 degrees Celsius when we pack the car in Edmonton, the tailgate is almost frozen shut, and needs some help to open. By the time we pack the car – which is less than a minute – our hands and fingers are freezing.

On the road south, it doesn’t take long for the temperature outside to hit -27 degrees, and I am once again thankful for heated seats and climate aircon. We are toasty warm inside the Mazda CX-70, but the occasional toilet or coffee stop reminds us just how bloody cold it is outside. The water in my insulated drink bottle has been frozen for two days now; just leaving it in the car overnight means it stays solid.

We’re sitting around 110km/h pretty much all day today, and the road is almost dead straight. It’s on these boring roads and the CX-70’s steering assist comes into play, as it takes away much of the steering input needed to stay in our lane. It’s one of those newer car features that we’ve quickly taken for granted, but it does reduce a lot of fatigue from driving on such a boring, straight road.

Since we’re on the main highway south between Edmonton and Calgary, the traffic is a lot heavier and the scenery has changed from stunning mountains and lakes, to simply white fields. The snow is thick here, and all you can see is white, everywhere. Wind blowing snow across the road is constant, and a little eerie too.

While the speed limit is 110km/h, 80% of traffic is doing around 120km/h. We’ve still yet to see a single traffic cop patrolling the highways, since arriving two weeks ago. Today, we spotted a patrol car, but it was at the side of the highway with a broken-down truck.

You would think then that the traffic would take advantage of the lack of police, and go crazy – but they do not. While most are exceeding the speed limit, everyone is indicating lane changes, everyone moves to the ‘slow’ lane after passing other traffic, no one is aggressive and no one is tailgating. I live in hope that our Police and NZTA do a field trip here and experience this. It’s quite surreal.

A few hundred kilometres into today’s drive, and we pull into a Calgary suburb and visit Gasoline Alley Museum. There was some confusion on our part here, as we went to the town of Gasoline Alley (part of the town of Red Deer), but the car museum is some 100km further south. We got it sorted, but it felt confusing.

The car museum is part of Heritage Park, a destination to highlight the history of Calgary, for Calgarians. It first opened in 1964 and is situated on a 127-acre peninsula of prime parkland, surrounded on three sides by the Glenmore Reservoir, with the Rocky Mountains framing the park. There are 180 exhibits comprising of 50,000 artefacts. This is a serious achievement, and Gasoline Alley Museum is just part of the park’s displays.

The whole park is the brainchild of local businessman Ron Carey, who donated most of the items to the Heritage Park trust to enable it to open.

It costs C$14.95 for an adult to enter Gasoline Alley Museum, and there are 50 vehicle exhibits, as well as a huge amount of memorabilia, such as historic automotive signs and petrol pumps.

The entire museum is extremely professional, and while most of the vehicles on display are more vintage than classic, every single one is restored to perfection. I spy the Cord, and drool over it a little, reading that it was ten times the cost of a Model T, leading to Cord’s demise. Right next to the Cord is a V12 Auburn – I had no idea they even made a V12 version. 

Stunning Cord L-29

One of the surprising exhibits (for me, at least) was the old petrol bowsers from the 1920/1930s. According to one of the staff, there are 137 of them, and all restored to new condition. They are dotted all around the museum, and a hugely tall. To complete the ‘original’ feeling of the venue, some of the restored petrol pumps sit outside, as they would have in their day. The ones outside sit covered in snow, and one of the staff sighs when I mention this. 

Another exhibit that sits off to the side is the Bison Exhibit. This was a completely unexpected and pretty sobering exhibit, and I spent as much time reading about the Bison as I did with the cars. According to the statistics, in 1880 there were an estimated 30 million Bison in the USA, Canada, and Mexico. By 1910, this was reduced to 1076 in Canada, and 1032 in the USA. Numbers so small they could actually count them. 

The US military decided that the best way to put the local native Indian population under control and into submission was to destroy their food source, so shot as many Bison as they could find. Obviously, they achieved the massacre.

By 1990, there were 250,000 Bison in private herds and this had risen to 400,000 in 2016 across the USA, Canada and Mexico. Apparently, the free-ranging herd in Yellowstone Park is the largest number of free-ranging Bison left.

Some of the museum’s petrol pumps sit outside, where they began

After the museum, it was another hour’s drive to Lethbridge, our location for tonight.

It’s been 2 weeks since we left a nice 22 degrees in Wellington. Tonight, in Lethbridge, it’s risen to a balmy -15 degrees, but that should change as we head south into Montana tomorrow.

READ PART ONE OF THIS TRAVEL BLOG HERE.

We are loving Canada!
Previous articleAll-new Honda Civic Hatch SR hybrid available now in NZ
Next articleProject V8 Sunbeam Rapier Fastback: Part 9
Fred Alvrez
How on earth to start this? I've been car/bike/truck crazy since I was a teen. Like John, I had the obligatory Countach poster on the wall. I guess I'm more officially into classic and muscle cars than anything else - I currently have a '65 Sunbeam Tiger that left the factory the same day as I left the hospital as a newborn with my mother. How could I not buy that car? In 2016 my wife and I drove across the USA in a brand-new Dodge Challenger, and then shipped it home. We did this again in 2019 in a 1990 Chev Corvette - you can read about that trip on DriveLife, and again in 2023 buying a C5 Corvette and shipping it home. I'm a driving instructor and an Observer for the Institute of Advanced Motorists - trying to do my bit to make our roads safer.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

 

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.