Lodging and dining on our road trip in British Columbia Canada

"Did you rent a camper? " is a question I often get when I say that we were roadtripping in Canada.  Or if we booked via an organization...but we do none of that.  We never have, neither on the roadtrips we did previously in different areas of the US either.

Our planning is very artisanal via Google Maps and an Excel that lists potential stops and the driving distances per day and then we search mostly for hotel chains such as Best Western or Holiday Inn or so that exist frequently in the region we visit.  We find travelling via hotels in North-America quite easy: any place at least has some motels to cater for travellers of long distances and a standard room usually has two double beds so they do cater for a reasonable price 4 people in a room.  They are usually also equipped with a fridge (which is handy since we carry lots of food around...see the picnics I describe later) and microwave and coffee machines.  That is a big contrast with Europe where you need to search and pay for family rooms.  

Only in big cities such as Vancouver (or LA or Miami) where the ground price per square meter is ridiculous, the room size is very often very cramped and you wonder how we can fit into the room with all our suitcases if we can just barely walk around the beds.   In Victoria BC, we were lucky to find a BW with a really big family room with kitchenette etc...aaah space is nice.  (so I don't think I'd survive with 2 children in a camper). 

Small room with a great view

So we stayed in hotels in the great Vancouver Island and in our destinations on Vancouver Island. 

In more tourist area's, there are "resort hotels" , where the rooms are more small apartments, meant for families to stay for a longer period of time.  After 10 days of restaurant food, the boys were delighted to be able to go to the grocery store and cook a meal at home.  

We stayed in a Beach resort hotel in Osoyoos in the Okanogan, and in a log cabin of Glacier Resort hotel in Revelstoke. 

And in our last week in Whistler we stayed in a condo, which was a small 2-story apartment, which gave a real "home" feeling. 

In Creston valley we had the luck to stay in a private property of my host family

So all in all we stayed in rooms with kitchen possibilities for about half of our trip and in small regular hotel rooms half of the time.  That meant we had to be out for dinner a lot of times. We also noticed that hotels by default don't have breakfast included.   We often didn't change that because frankly ...hotel breakfasts in North-America are dreadful.   Some muffins, some cereals and a pancake or waffle machine that produces dough-tasting crap are the full buffet with some huge thermoses that serve coffee.  And all of that to be eaten on paper plates and disposable coffee cups. Well I guess it's better than nothing but bleh. 

So frankly, we extended our picknick habit on the road to also a breakfast habit on the road on some days.  Just as easy and qualitative is buying some pastries and juices on the go and eat them somewhere in nature, in a park near the water or so. 

breakfast in Stanley park , downtown Vancouver.

Drive through Tim Horton's breakfast, eaten next to BC's just elected most beautiful lake...can it get any better? Beats by far any hotel crappy buffet. 

Also for lunch, when being on the road, it was far more practical (not being dependent on finding civilization during lunch time) to carry on sandwich buns, a series of meats or cheeses, fruit and raw vegetables and lots of drinks.  Most (communal/provincial/national) parks have picknick zones with tables and waste deposit and toilets. 

The majority of the evenings we ate out in restaurants.  On Victoria and the Vancouver west coast, I deliberately profited from the excellent seafood availability.   Inland we resorted more to local brewery pubs and family restaurants with a more standard American menu such as burgers & ribs, tex mex, a standard pasta, the standard salmon as fish option, some salads and a kid's menu.  As explained above, we also truly enjoyed now and then, as a change of scene, to cook at home. But even when we had the availability of a kitchen, we sometimes joined dinner with friends.  

All in all it is the perfect mix for me both for lodging as dining. We've been on road trips now so often in North America that neither of those stress me out to book and search on our own as I know what's out there usually. 

We just found in the top touristic places ...eg Tofino BC, that it was impossible to make reservations but that they only need walk-in guests. That was rather annoying.