Well this took long enough, but here goes...
This is rather late as it was back in September now, but I know a few people asked for a write-up and figured I ought to get round to it.
As most of you know I’m really into road trip style holidays, especially in North America. This year we picked Western Canada and the Pacific Northwest, an area I don’t see come up often on the various road trip threads.
Perhaps this rambling essay might change that in future, who knows!
First thing I learnt in the planning process is that Canada is expensive. Economy flights in September to Vancouver or Calgary came out at really rather daft prices – more than I’d paid to fly to Australia and, perhaps more relevantly, more than it would cost to fly, at the same time, to California, a longer flight. Quite considerably more expensive, in fact. This is probably why I’d always put this particular trip off, it just seemed like crappy value. Next up is car hire. Canadian car hire appeared to suck, too. It wasn’t cheap and they came with annoying clauses about crossing the border into the US, enforcing mileage limits on rentals where you visited the USA.
Fortunately, Seattle is just 140 miles from Vancouver. I could hire a better car, totally unlimited in terms of mileage, for half the price. Awesome. A route was therefore planned starting and finishing from Seattle – we’d head up the coast to Vancouver, a few days in Vancouver, then out along the TransCanada Highway across the mountains to Alberta, where we’d take in Icefields Parkway, Banff, etc. From there we’d skirt round Calgary and head South, crossing back into the USA into Montana. Then into Glacier national park, through Montana, then down to Portland, Oregon, then back to Seattle. The big appeal was fantastic mountains and there were many on the route.
Sorted!
Or not.
Turns out Seattle is even worse for booking flights. Only BA fly direct. Couldn’t be bothered with the hassle of connecting flights. Didn’t want to pay BA the staggering £950 – yes NINE HUNDRED AND FIFTY POUNDS – they wanted, per person, for an economy flight. So I decided to book into Vancouver after all, and then one-way a car down to Seattle to start the trip.
So, booked and done. Just under 3 weeks and 3 different hire cars. Standard full-size sedans for the One-ways to and from Seattle and my favourite class – Luxury with Alamo – for the main rental. Luxury with Alamo is a bargain. It’s usually hardly any more money than the full-size class – about 30-40 quid a week more – and gives you access to the best non speciality cars in the fleet.
The trip began back in early September. Arrived at Vancouver airport straight to the rental car pickup location. Was hoping for the new Chevrolet Impala. Got ‘upgraded’ to an ‘SUV’. I suspect the ‘upgrade’ was because they had an ‘SUV’ (It’s really not an SUV) with US plates that needed to go South of the border. So, first car – a Chevrolet Captiva. I won’t bother to expand on this particular car suffice to say it was completely terrible, had no redeeming features and you should not rent one.
We immediately left Vancouver first thing the next morning – we’d be back later to do it properly – and headed straight for the US border. Took about an hour to get through here, as we came through via land you don’t need an ESTA but you do need to queue up, fill in an I94-W form and pay $6 per person instead. Formalities concluded it was a reasonably short 2 hour drive down I-5 to Seattle and what I was really looking forward to, my proper rental car!
Dumped the Captiva and went to the booth to pick up the next car. A nearly-new Cadillac ATS 2.0T. Absolutely perfect, pretty much exactly the car I was hoping to get. As this is Motors, I’ll pause to tell you a bit about the new Cadillac range.
Until last year, Cadillac had an almost complete range of frankly terrible luxury saloon cars. You had the CTS – which was supposed to be some sort of 5 Series rival, but fell absolutely miles short. You had the STS – I’m not even sure what that was supposed to be, and the huge ultra-barge, the DTS. I rented one of those a few years ago and it was so bad I swapped it 3 days later.
Not anymore. They are just completing the complete refresh of the range – gone are the old rubbish and in are a brand new generation of all new cars designed to compete with the class leaders. There are 3 – the ATS is the new 3 Series rival, there is the new CTS which has quite literally only just come out and at the top of the range the XTS.
Everything I’d read about this range of cars was positive and the press seemed to rave about the ATS.
First thing you noticed inside was that aside from a particularly naff looking centre console, this thing was built properly. Most of the surfaces, including the dash, were covered in leather. As standard. BMW won’t offer you this at all on a 3 Series and charge you £1000 for it on a 5 Series. Everything I touched felt like it was put together properly. The seats were supportive and comfortable. The dash contained a large colour touch-screen infotainment system, and the instrument panel also had a colour screen, too. First impressions? Excellent.
The ATS is RWD and offered with 3 engines – a horrible 2.5 litre 4 cylinder, a 2 litre turbocharged 4 and a 3.6 litre V6. Mine was the 2.0T – which develops 270bhp and is allegedly good for 0-60 in circa 6 seconds. I threaded the car out of the rental centre, across the street and onto the highway onramp.
Foot down and yup – it’s got 270bhp. It isn’t rip-your-face-off-fast but it’s certainly quick with plenty of midrange shove. Gearbox is pretty good too, sadly not an 8 speed just a 6, but the shifts are smooth and it kicks down nicely when prompted. No paddles unfortunately, just tiptronic control via the shifter.
Leaving the freeway – it’s time to visit the Seattle museum of flight just one junction up the road – and I encounter my first corner. Which the ATS just.. goes round. Brilliantly. Just like a 3 Series. An American car that can handle? This car seems very promising. I’ll reflect on it more at the end...
First couple of days we spent in and around the Seattle area. Took in the city – which is lovely. Reminds me a lot of San Francisco in places, lots of steep streets. Compact city centre area, it doesn’t take long to see most things. Washington has the largest ferry network in the United States, so we took advantage of them and took a ferry trip into the San Juan Islands, which were absolutely beautiful.
We then left Seattle to head to Vancouver – but as it’s such a short drive I elected to go via Mount Baker, one of many active strato-volcanoes on the West Coast. Fantastic mountain scenery and brilliant winding roads. And unusually for the US, a rental car that’s more than up to the job. The more I drive this car, the more I like it.
3 nights in Vancouver in total – and what a great city it is. Certainly one of my favourites, the setting reminds me very much of Sydney with its large park area (Stanley Park) and waterside setting complete with huge suspension bridges. We took in the city centre, went up to some of the mountains beside the city for some great views, etc.
Really liked Vancouver, I can see why there is a huge thread in GD full of people who think it’s great.
Now it’s off to Banff – which is actually a very long way from Vancouver. So long that we had to break the trip up for an overnight stop, for which I chose Revelstoke, a small town almost entirely devoid of anything interesting whatsoever.
But the drive from Vancouver to Revelstoke was fantastic – the scenery in places was simply breathtaking, better than anything I have ever seen before.
Next day we complete the drive to Banff passing every more beautiful scenery. Banff itself is a lovely town with very nice buildings and the dominating shadow of the surrounding mountains. It is also a massive tourist trip, so we elected to use Canmore, 20 minutes down the road, as our base for a 2 night stay to better explore Banff and the Icefields Parkway.
Next day was Icefields Parkway. Again, just incredible scenery. I won’t bother waffling on and instead will just show you the pictures – it’s almost too awesome for words really.
Also visited Lake Louise, which is a location that’s featured in many photos and also Lake Morraine, which is far less well known but arguably even better.
Next day we spent mostly around Banff and then set off to head towards the US border. No time for Calgary sadly, we skirted around and left the Rockies behind (for now) into the plains of Aberta for our next overnight stop in a random town near the US border. I know what they mean about Big Sky now, the contrast in the landscape between the plains and the mountains was huge!
Back into the US at the Montana border crossing – very easy, straight across, no drama and was surprised to find that the road had a 70mph limit. Not seen that before on a normal single carriageway road but it was very welcome. Today the main event is Glacier National Park, one of the more little known national parks but once we got inside it turned out to be very much a hidden gem.
The scenery is once again (This is becoming a boring theme here isn’t it) stunning – in my opinion Glacier is more beautiful than Yosemite. The Going To The Sun Road cuts right through the middle of the park, hugging the mountains as it goes. It’s actually one of the hardest roads to get into a trip in the US because it’s only open for about 2-3 months a year – it takes months to plough after the winter and then closes at the end of September. At times there is a sheer drop over the barrier. Scary stuff, but good fun! Oh, we had to stop for a couple of bears to cross the road, too!
Overnight stay in Missoula, Montana where everyone seemed genuinely amazed that some British people had come to visit. I guess it’s less popular with tourists, but for no good reason, everything I saw about Montana I very very much liked.
Next day we took it easy and went as far as Spokane, in Washington State, crossing through Idaho on the way. Even on this relatively dull 3 hour Interstate drive the scenery was fantastic and we again found ourselves crossing mountain passes.
After Spokane was another reasonably long drive down to Portland, Oregon. This was the biggest surprise of the entire trip. I had it down as a necessary evil, 5-6 hours of dull boring open country. The reality is that at least half of it took us right thought he Columbia River Gorge, yet another beautiful scenic wonder – the entire interstate just winds alongside the mighty Columbia river in a huge gorge for miles and miles.
Portland was nice – tax free shopping, too.
After Portland we went to Mount St Helens National Volcanic Monument, famous for it’s devastating eruption in the early 1980’s. Even 30 years on you can still see where the lava flowed from the volcano and you can still see burnt trees sticking up through the new ground.
Second to last full day we spent heading up to the Olympic National Park, east of Seattle, for a bit more mountain scenery.
Then the next day, sadly, it was time to say goodbye to my Cadillac ATS.
Seriously, what a car that was. Cadillac have aimed it squarely at the 3 Series and frankly in my opinion they have really hit the target. It rides well, it handles well, the engine is excellent (And economical, I averaged 35mpg imperial over the entire 3000 miles we did in it!), the interior is well appointed, it’s just a brilliant car.
The only thing that lets it down is the bizarre plastic centre console and the associated Cadillac CUE interface which tries to be a smartphone but simply isn’t. This aside, this is a genuinely decent car and if the rest of the refreshed Cadillac range is as good then the established premium brands have a problem on their hands. If this car was available in the UK I would give serious consideration to actually buying one. I actually think I prefer it to the F30 3 Series.
If you think American Sedans don’t handle, try one of the new Cadillac’s.
If you want reminding that actually, American cars don’t handle, then one-way-rent a Dodge Charger, which is exactly what I did next to get back to Vancouver. What a total barge, especially after the Cadillac.
So that’s that – another trip over and congratulations for reading enough of my waffle to get this far. In my opinion this was probably my most enjoyable trip yet – better even than California – and yet it’s an area which seems to get very little attention on here. I’d definitely recommend it, and British Columbia is especially beautiful. I’d love to go back to Canada, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
But watch out for petrol in BC – it was $1.55 a litre for proper stuff which was about £1 a litre. MASSIVELY more expensive than it was just across the border in the US (Even Alberta was noticeably cheaper).
There we go, hope you guys enjoyed it. Any questions/extra photos/whatever just ask!
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