We weren’t going to go on holiday next year. Take a year off and save the money to go towards our New Zealand trip in 2014. Yeah, like that was going to happen. We went to Canada early this year and frankly it wasn’t our best trip so I felt under some self imposed pressure to make amends. Next time, I thought, it’ll be awesome. How to make it awesome? Do awesome things. Go and see whales, stay in a bit of luxury, go see Grizzly bears, drive a world famous bit of road and travel through a part of Canada that we haven’t been to before oh and while you’re about it, why not go on a big ferry journey past the islands of BCs coastline. That sound ok? Fair enough, let’s do it.

There’s a fair bit of planning to do trying to sort this out for various reasons so I’m starting now and looking to travel next August. Seems like a long time away and it is but I’m happier knowing that things like flights, car hire and accommodation is booked well in advance. The other good point it that by the time we go we’ve paid for a good chunk of the holiday already.

The basic plan is this…

• Fly direct to Victoria, Vancouver Island (change planes in Vancouver).
• Collect hire car and drive to Brentwood Bay Resort and stay for a few nights.
• Drive to the west coast of the island and stay in Ucluelet or Tofino and while there catch a whale watching trip.
• Drive to Port Hardy (long drive but should be fun) and stay the night
• Catch ferry next morning to Bella Coola (takes something like 13 hours)
• Stay in Bella Coola for a few days and go Grizzly watching
• Drive the famous Highway 20 to Williams Lake (or thereabouts) and stay at a motel.
• Drive to Whistler and spend a couple of nights there.
• Drive to Vancouver, spend a couple of nights there before flying home.

A few things need ironing out before anything happens, for instance I need proper prices on flights and car hire before deciding on exact dates and I should be able to do that fairly soon. Once dates are in place we can reserve hotel rooms (some of the places we want to go book up really far in advance) and also our whale watching/Grizzly bear watching trips.

I’ll document the process as I go and I’ll be starting with the flights.