Canadian Rockies Motorhome Holiday
Last year we decided to book a Motorhome and tour the Rockies in Canada. On looking online I found a travel company called Canadian Affair who work with a charter airline named Air Transat who fly Airbus 330 200s. We booked the flights, an hotel and the Canadream 32 foot motorhome via Canadian Affair, I was a bit nervous of the Motorhome because it appeared you were signing in blood with all the terms and conditions of the Canadream hire. However everything went very smoothly and we flew out of Gatwick on a very nice aircraft with very pleasant cabin crew, I had previously used Microsoft Streets and Trips to plan the route we would take and to add possible camp sites along the way. Using a GPS dongle on my laptop this proved to be a very good way and had the advantage over a Sat Nav in that the route could be planned with many waypoints instead of the more A to B approach of the Sat Nav. (I had previously used the laptop to plan and guide us through the highways and byways of Route 66 the year before and was impreesed with the ability to put in as many waypoints as you liked, some days we had more than 90 on Route 66). One thing i would recommend if you hire a motorhome is to take out the optional windscreen insurance (around $66 cad) as a windscreen breakage is expensive. Fortunately we did take this out as on day 2 a lorry threw up a stone and cracked our screen. Canadream proved to be a pleasant experience picking us up from a Skytrain station and dropping us off afterwards. It does take a while to process you prior to setting off in the Motorhome. The flights were reasonable priced, we paid £1310 for the return trip to Vancouver for 2 with extra legroom seats in the price. The Motorhome was a little over £1,800 for 3 weeks with the unlimited mileage option. If you are thinking of such a holiday I can recommend these companies as in our case everything went very smoothly, so smoothly in fact we are going again this year but heading south in the USA from Vancouver. This was our first experience of a motorhome and of a slideout (we have a touring caravan). Interesting but we will stay with a touring caravan at home 'cos we like the ability to park your home on site and go off in the car. And the Canadian Rockies are truly wonderful and in May / June you can see bears along the road sides as the come out of hibernation to eat the dandelions. Definitely a great holiday to have.