BackRoads: Wild Canada West

Touring British Columbia in Western Canada

Everyone knows that the anticipation of a vacation sometimes exceeds the reality of the trip. Last year, my riding partner, Sharon, and I were lucky to find a motorcycle tour offered by Coastline Motorcycle Tours & Rentals of Victoria British Columbia where this was certainly not the case. We had such a wonderful time it is hard to describe by using mere words. After months of agonizing, we had decided to take a chance and do the tour they offered in British Columbia. There was so much between the decision to go and actually arriving in Vancouver but since we did pay in-full up-front one foremost thought was “Would these guys actually show up?”

The tour offered was a trip from Vancouver BC through the Rockies and back. It was to last 8 days, and included everything you could want in a motorcycle tour. The price was right, and after speaking to David Graham from Coastline we were convinced this was the vacation of a lifetime.

It didn’t take long for us to believe we had reached motorcycle-riding heaven.

Day 1 – Vancouver

We met up in Vancouver with three other couples from Australia and Germany, along with the Coastline guys, David Graham and John Bigalke. We spent that Sunday getting to know our travel mates, and took a ride around the city and up into the hills to see the sites.

There were six bikes including David Graham and his wife Carmen. David also had two assistants; John was the mechanic, who drove the truck towing a three-rail trailer. Our luggage went in the truck. Sharon and I were two-up on a Road King Classic. Jeff helped John with the driving and taking care of our luggage and the bikes.

The weather had been horrible for the past few weeks, up to and including Sunday, but there seemed to be a promise in the air to clear up later and to be perfect riding weather conditions by Monday. There was a welcoming banquet that evening and we then retired for the night in anticipation of our first day in the saddle.

Day 2 – Vancouver to Kelowna

We had a mid-morning departure from Vancouver and followed a variety of roads, including industrial, rural, freeway, and then up into the foothills of the mountains. We followed the Coquihalla Hwy from Chilliwack through Merritt, over the connector and down into Kelowna.

The route through the Fraser River Canyon is an incredible engineering feat, straddling both sides of the river with National and privately owned railways. We were only an hour and a half out of Vancouver and already climbing quite dramatically. There were huge mountains rising on either side of a narrow, twisty road.

We reached the canyon town of Lytton; the temperature had risen to about 95. All the way to Spence’s Bridge we glanced down to the river and watched the whitewater rafters. We stopped for lunch in what was a perfect spot to view the rafts coming down the Thompson River from the northeast.

We headed east and left the Thompson and traveled through the Nicola Valley to Merrit. From there we climbed yet again and down into the beautiful Okanagan Valley.

At dinner that evening, being from the east coast, we inquired whether these were the Rockies and David just chuckled...

We hope that you enjoyed reading this excerpt from "Wild Canada West". If you would like to read the entire article and more, you can order a back issue of May / Jun 2006 where this article was originally published.

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