Have you been to Vancouver / BC in the summer and what would you recommend?

[FusionChefGeoff]

About to book for next year - 2 weeks in August kids aged 15 and 12. No one wants to be driving more than 3 hours a day so not an epic road trip and hoping to narrow it to 3 main centres perhaps with 1 extra overnight ‘en route’ if we have to.

Want to see dramatic scenery, spend lots of time in nature, love lakes, 3 out of 4 love the sea. Wildlife a big plus too. 15 yo very active. Would also like to see baseball or an NFL type football game.

Im working with AI on ideas but also keen to get humans in on the action!!

Any experience greatly received as I’m very intimidated by the scale of what I’ve got to plan

We’d just got the perfect itinerary into Calgary across the Rockies then home from Vancouver…. Only to discover that BA don’t fly direct to Calgary and we are using Avios points!!!

Looks like we’d need an internal flight OUT to Calgary before the road trip back which seems so illogical but we’d really convinced ourselves to do the Rockies.

Now I’ve read the itinerary from @DaveCliftonIm going back to my original plan of focussing on Vancouver Island and Whistler.. I’m worried we’ll feel short changed as the BIG scenery ie Lake Louise was really what I was going for - would I get enough of a mountain / lakes fix just on the island and in Whistler??

Or is the Banff / Canmore area worth a domestic
connection?! We were thinking 2 nts Vancouver, 2 Ucelet, down to Duncan, then fly Victoria to Calgary…

We’re hoping to do this trip next year - decided it was too much to do rockies and Vancouver/ V island. We’re doing 5 nights Vancouver, 7 nights VI (Parksville and Tofino) and 5 nights Whistler. My kids will be 12/15. Anyone have any recommendations for accommodation? Looking for 4 star, kitchens, separate bedrooms (ND teens need their space!)

OP, my entire family lives in BC and I’ve been there more times than I can count. I can categorically assure you that while the Rockies are gorgeous, as a Brit you will be bowled over by the Coast and Island mountains. You will never look at the “Area Of Outstanding Natural Beauty” designation over here in the same way again. 😆

The biggest difference isn’t more/less beauty, it’s climate. The Rockies are drier and higher, with more silt in the lakes which makes them very blue. The Coast is a temperate rain forest, so everything is unimaginably lush and the Pacific is never that far away. Both ranges are high and sharp, with loads of extinct volcanos. You will not feel like you are missing out on dramatic BIG scenery if you stick to the coast and islands.

We wrestled with this one too and tied ourselves in knots about it - then, having spoken to some friends in Calgary, we realised it just wasn’t feasible for us to do this all in the time we had (it’s too big an area to cover, especially with kids), so we made peace with not doing Calgary and the Rockies this time. An excuse to go back and do that area properly!

Here’s some of my VI pics - plenty of big scenery for us.

@RayonSunrisethats a very good point I hadn’t appreciated fully before - we’re going over mid August - is the weather a real risk on the West Cost of VI?? If we focus on the island and Whistler and it’s a wash out that will be a real shame

On the island our winters are rainy and our summers are dry, not to say that it can't rain but it is rare.

Don’t worry, there are generally proper summers on the west coast. There’s an old joke out there, they only have two seasons - summer, and rain. 😁

Get the ferry to Salt Spring Island then the seaplane home. Or the seaplane to Tofino if you fancy surfing. If you have a car you can take it on the ferry there and back and get around a bit more easily, as public transport isn't really a thing on some of the smaller islands.

Bowen Island is a really nice daytrip on the ferry.

Also, if you go to Gastown try and avoid the area known as DTLES. It's a massive homeless encampment with a lot of open drug use. I found it fine to walk through during the day - people are just living their lives and don't really care about you, it feels safer than similar areas in other cities - but you may not feel safe with DC, and it can be quite jarring given it's round the corner from a fairly upmarket part of town.

This is probably not what you want at all, but, depending on budget, what about one week in Vancouver and then a one week cruise to Alaska? The 7 day itineraries from Vancouver are amazing and the scenery is incredible (Glacier Bay is 😮

@OuiOuiMonAminot more options!! Ha ha yes you’re right I don’t want more choices but that does sound epic. Thankfully neither child is a good sailor so wouldn’t go for that idea.

Good news is flights are booked now - after 2 stints at 1am tying to secure a Business Class return (with Avios points not our money!) managed it this morning wooo hooooo.

Going to have a week to recover and also watch some videos together about the Island / Rockies then finalise which itinerary we’re going with.

We flew into Calgary with Air Canada and stayed in Canmore as we were on a budget and Banff was too expensive to stay in. Banff is lovely though, we did the gondola and hot springs, lake Louise . We also did Revelstoke (wasn’t that fussed about Revelstoke), Okanargan (good for wine), Whistler (lovely), Squamish, Vancouver (Stanley park biking the sea wall is beautiful). All in less than 2 weeks but it was a lot of driving. My parents just did Vancouver island and preferred that to Vancouver but it’s massive so you’d need a good few days there getting over to it, driving on it and finding the nicer places.

it's year ago but from memory we stayed a couple of nights downtown and then moved out along the coast a short distance to Kitslano Beach. We hired bikes and went round Stanley Park and went up Grouse Mountain, there's an amazing food market at at Granville Island. We did Capilano suspension bridge too. Then spent some time on Vancouver Island, staying in Victoria and Sooke, went hiking and whale watching and canoeing, then onto Whistler for a few nights.
oooh you're making me want to go back!!