Road Trip Canada - to Merritt

We're taking this bloody car to Inv, er, Montreal

Air Canada must like me - I have been given an emergency row seat, although this time I have a young couple beside me, rather than the row to myself. I doubt they take in a word of the briefing we are given, so engrossed they are in each other. I had thought that being a party town, flights out of Puerto Vallarta on a Saturday evening would not be in demand, but the plane is nearly full. Remarkably, everyone boards early and we leave 30 minutes early. I watch The Brutalist for a second time - it is such a great movie, the one I would have given the Oscar to.

Getting through and out of Vancouver airport is very quick, although I am asked a lot of questions. Then Google goes haywire, and I don’t know enough to correct it - instead of putting me on the train to the city centre and then the #4 bus, it says to get off the train at a certain station and catch four buses (the last of which is the #4). It takes more than two hours to get to my hostel, and I’m fretting because I don’t know what time they close for the night: they don’t as it happens.

The hostel is at Jericho Beach, near UBC, and Jericho Village has two places to eat open 24/7 - a bakery with an amazing array of colourful patisserie, sandwiches, cakes etc and good old A&W, which does a surprisingly decent chicken burger. Not yet ready to go to bed, I hang around the hostel doing my laundry. In the morning, I go to the other bakery, the artisanal one, and have my first really good coffee since I left Canada, so good that I have two. Then it is time to go collect the beast.

It’s a long way to the Canadream depot - it is out in the countryside south of Delta, a bus, then the train, then two buses away. I take so long enjoying my coffee that I arrive 20 minutes later than intended - they give us 30 minute slots in which to collect vehicles, and mine is at 1:30. While I wait for my vehicle to arrive, I talk to an older lady who is waiting for a taxi - I’m sure she says she’s been waiting 3 hours! This place really is out in the wops.

Rita is the lovely lass who assists me, and gives me a pretty thorough tour of the vehicle, point out how to make everything work and where everything is (this is supposed to be a $50 extra). I have been given a coffee maker, a lawn chair and a sheet on the bed - anything else, I will have to acquire (they did offer a bed and kitchen pack - for $185: get off!). I’ll show you the inside later, but here he is.

I think he’s definitely a he, and if I were to name him, it would have to be something like Brutus. He’s a Ford F350 with a 6.7 litre V8 Turbo diesel engine. My first visit is to Walmart, where I spend $22 getting a pillow, a pot, a cup and a six pack of Orange Crush. I did want to buy a french press, but can’t find one, so decide I’ll be a tea drinker. I can’t find soap either. I don’t know if a blanket will be needed - I don’t want to over invest on things I’ll be throwing away in two weeks.

My second visit is back to the hostel, to collect my bag, then to stop at the bakery for coffee and donuts and the liquor store to stock my fridge. It beeps annoyingly at me, but that’s a later problem. Now the fun begins as, to go north, I have to drive through central Vancouver - it’s crammed with traffic, the lanes seem very narrow, and cars are ducking in and out of them as if they are not about to be crushed by Brutus. Pedestrians cross the streets at will. Once out of the city, it is a beautiful drive up the coast, although I can’t stop often to take photos.

Brutus is in his element on the open road, very smooth, but very thirsty - 15 litres to go 100 km. I pull in to Squamish, which is at the top of the coastal bit of the road, to see if I can get a look back down. Nope. But I like this. There’s more forest and a river as I head north.

My destination is Whistler, a mere 120 km from Vancouver, yet when I get there, my chosen bar is no longer taking food orders. I watch enviously as piles of food go out to those who were in time as I sip my drink, and am most annoyed at the chap across the bar from me - he picks at mtwo of his chicken wings and walks off, leaving a pile to be binned. No matter - Stinky’s is still cooking.

Intel has suggested there’s a park up spot about 10 km north of town - it’s a great place to spend my first night on the road, although it is after 11 before I settle in.

I go back to Whistler in the morning, stopping at the Green Lake on the way.

Whistler is built in an unusual way - there’s nothing haphazard about it. Driving past the town centre, you’d hardly know it is there, as all the shops and bars face inwards, to central paths. No vehicles. It’s easy to get lost - I need to use my map at one point to exit. I overhear a local say to a couple of tourists that it is designed to trap us.

Still, I enjoy wandering around there. I’ve always resisted going in to the Japanese coffee shop % Arabica, because they only have takeaway cups, but this one, I can’t.

I don’t expect it, but Whistler has a beautiful library, with really useful individual study spaces, which I take advantage of for a while.

Back at the vehicle, the minor beep from the fridge has become a full scale alarm. It takes me a while to work out it is the propane gas detector, and a short while to work out I have bumped a knob on the stove, releasing gas into the van. I turn the gas off, the fan on, open the windows and have a smoke. Three of these statements are true. Eventually, the alarm subsides, I read the instructions for the fridge and stop the beeping and head south a bit, to look at Alta Lake.

Going north, up BC #99, Pemberton is the first town, but it’s very hot and not much is going on, so I fuel up and carry on. Next is Lillooet where, to the casual observer, not much is going on either and many buildings are not being used. But I know there’s a craft brewery at the far end of town.

I need the pause here, because I have a choice of direction - through Kamloops which is more direct but, according to Sam, unpleasant, or a less direct route, south through Kelowna. I pick the latter, which involves a short stint on the Trans Canada Highway, which I expect to be like an Interstate, but is more like this.

The route turns unpleasant when I turn off, as the road is under repair, almost all 66 km of it. I’m convinced a big piece has been gouged out of my windscreen, and fret over whether my travel insurance will cover it, and how much it will cost.

I stop for the night in Merritt - it looks like it had been a nice town, but most of the action has moved out along the highways that intersect here. I finally have me some Popeyes chicken - very crunchy! A short street runs past it and terminates at a big piece of land being sold for development, with a circular gravel bit, which is where I stop - I don’t notice the tyre marks at first: obviously, the locals come here to drive round and round in circles. Not tonight, thankfully.

In the morning, I get such a bad coffee at the one café in Merritt that I leave it after three sips: not only is it very sweet but it’s flavoured with something that is not coffee.

Distance from Vancouver - 420 km

Dates - 28 June to 1 July (Happy Canada day)

Cheers!