Vancouver to Revelstoke

• Author: WantsToTravelMore
• Accommodation: Revelstoke Accommodations

This is the first article of a circle tour my family did between Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and back. This journey in the end covered roughly 2600 kms of driving in one week, which by some standards is crazy, but by Canadian standards is not too bad.

Our first leg was Vancouver to Revelstoke, which is about 6 hours of driving. If you are only familiar with normal east-coast driving, be prepared that this is a lot of high altitude mountain driving. This is good because the scenery is amazing but can be daunting at first.

When you take Highway One, you need to stop at Hope BC for a couple of reasons. This town is famous for being the wilderness / small town for the first Rambo movie. You also need a full tank of gas here before taking the The Coquihalla Highway, which is the fastest way to Revelstoke. This highway however, is so mental that it made it on the Discovery Channel as “Highway Thru Hell“. Make sure to check conditions before taking it, especially October to April. Also, snow tires are required for snowy seasons.

The speed limit on this road was, much to my amazement, recently raised to 120 km/hr (about 74 mph). I’m not sure the logic here given how insane this road is to start with!

Kamloops is the end of “The Coq”, pronounced The Coke. At this point any of the road side gas stations or Tim Hortons will work for a break.

After that it’s east to Revelstoke via interesting town names like Chase, Salmon Arm and Sicamous (pronounced sic-a-moose).

Revelstoke itself is a railway town, home to a large dam and about every outdoor activity possible. For us it was a place to rest before the big push to Calgary. Of course in Revelstoke, we had to stay somewhere and eat something!