Summer 2025 Highlights: Part 3 (Road Trip Edition)

This is a long, non-bookish post featuring a lot of pictures of my family and dinosaurs and beautiful scenery. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Let’s begin.

It started with a t-shirt from the thrift store.

As many kids do, our oldest, Pearl, went through a dinosaur phase when she was younger. She loved watching The Land Before Time movies (even the later, really bad ones). She liked to get books about dinosaurs out of the library. She had several dinosaur-themed articles of clothing and dinosaur toys. Her interests have shifted in recent years but never entirely gone away. Not long ago, while browsing through our local thrift shop, I found a dinosaur t-shirt and showed it to her. We saw that it had come from the Royal Tyrell Museum in Drumheller, Alberta and she learned that that was a place she could visit one day. Her dad told her stories about his own visit, when he was about her age. And so this became a destination that she hoped to see one day and when they made their 2025 goals and dreams at school, she put it on her vision board.

Peter and I started to dream and think about the possibilities. Two things were in our way: 1) timing with my job and how many days I could take off and 2) we have an older car that doesn’t do well in the heat or going over 90km/h (ie not a great vehicle for a road trip through the Rocky Mountains and into the desert. So we looked at flights and we looked at car rentals and we wanted to camp and we wanted to go slow and we were stymied by cost and timing.

In the end, I finagled 10 days off of work and we found a great car solution. We learned about a car rental program called Turo (this is not an ad) which kind of works like Air B&B for cars. We were able to rent an electric car (a 2023 Hyundai Kona if you care about that sort of thing). The man we rented from met us on the Vancouver side of the ferry so we could walk on and leave our car at home. We had all our stuff for 10 days as well as our camping gear so we were fairly loaded up.

After figuring out how to get all our things in the Kona (smaller than what we are used to) and loading up, we hit the road with our Summer 2025 playlist ready to go.

Our first stop was Hope, BC (yes, where Rambo went) where we had lunch at a diner we’ve visited before and charged the car for the first time. Peter had done a little research beforehand but this was a new experience for us. What we learned was that the BC Hydro EV chargers were the cheapest option. Not always the fastest but fast enough for us. We tried to give ourselves lots of leeway and throughout the trip usually charged after 2 to 3 hours of driving. This worked out because we were also travelling with a 7- and 10-year-old and frequent breaks were needed all around.

Our next stop was Merritt, BC where it was hot and, honestly, not a lot was going on. Not sure if it was simply because it was Monday (most things are closed on Mondays in our small town too) or if this is what Merritt is always like. My impression was not of a thriving town but we were only there for about 30 minutes to charge the car and find some cold drinks.

After Merritt, we drove on to Salmon Arm, BC. What we were quickly learning was that the BC Hydro chargers tended to be located near Visitor Centres and in the centre of small town downtown areas. This was pretty perfect because it then gave us a chunk of time to explore these small towns along the way and there was usually a public washroom nearby.

Salmon Arm was one of the most beautiful little towns we stopped in on our travels. It was a little cooler than Merritt and far more colourful. Lots of busy shops and a beautiful park at the lakefront.

We made our final stop for Day One in Kamloops. We’d booked this hotel in advance because of the cheap price and weren’t expecting anything special. When we checked in, the friendly employee at the front desk said he was upgrading us to a family suite with a river view. Cool. It wasn’t until we walked around to the other side of the hotel where our door was that we realized what a great spot we were in. Right outside our hotel room door was a deck with tables and chair overlooking the river. Our family suite had a little kitchenette, a queen bed, and a bedroom with 2 twin beds, perfect for our girls to share. We could have stayed longer!

We enjoyed the pool and the free breakfast in the morning, then got back on the road.

Day 2 on the road again.

Our destination for night 2 was Golden, BC. We had hoped to camp in the Rockies but by the time we got ourselves organized and planned our trip, there were no spots left in the national parks. Instead we found a private campground in Golden. Golden is just this side of the Alberta border and already in the Mountain time zone.

At first glance, our campground seemed perfect – spacious and well-equipped. Our site was tucked away and pretty private, with the playground nearby. An adjacent field had parasailers landing almost constantly and the field nearest us featured multitudes of groundhogs popping up everywhere.

But the mosquitoes. My goodness, the mosquitoes. Of course we have mosquitoes on the Sunshine Coast but living by the ocean, they tend to not be too bad. In Golden, there were literal swarms of them. They were on our faces, our arms, our legs, everywhere. We quickly covered up but it was also very hot so we were either sweating or swatting. I’ve lived and travelled in Asia and I’ve never experienced mosquitoes like we did in Golden.

Wednesday morning we were happy to pack up and get out of town (although we had unfortunately pre-booked a site on the same campground on the trip home and couldn’t cancel without penalty).

We were quickly driving through the Rockies and bringing our girls into another Canadian province for the first time. You can’t really drive from BC to Alberta and not stop at Lake Louise in Banff National Park. It’s a beautiful and very famous spot. Peter and I had both been as kids and I was last there in 2009 when I did a road trip from Vancouver to Edmonton with a friend.

Currently, Tourism Canada has several initiatives to encourage travel within Canada and one of them is that it’s free to visit National Parks this summer. (Parking is still expensive.) Lake Louise is always a busy spot for tourists but maybe even more right now. That said, it certainly is an amazing spot and gazing up at the mountains, the glaciers, the turquoise water, is pretty awe-inspiring and I’m glad Pearl and Rose got to see it.

We had planned to stop in Banff to charge the car, only to learn that there aren’t very many EV chargers in Banff. Obviously there are no BC Hydro chargers in Alberta but there also isn’t any sort of provincial equivalent and so overall we found it was more expensive to charge the car once in Alberta. (Makes sense as gas and oil are major industries there.) We drove on to Canmore which I remembered as being kind of a podunk town when I visited it as a kid in the 1990s. It’s certainly grown since then. We stopped for a charge, a drink, and a visit to a Canmore brewery and then drove on to Calgary.

In Calgary we charged the car again at a big mall area and spent our time browsing a Cabela’s. (I’m not sure if we have these in BC – I’d never been in one before.) Peter remembered a previous visit to Calgary where he visited a place called Peters’ Drive- In and he really wanted to go back. So we made this our dinner stop and it was delicious. The portions were huge and we were eating leftover fries for days!

We left Calgary and kept driving. Once we got out of Calgary we quickly noticed how different the landscape was. This was our first glimpse of the prairies, driving past fields and fields of yellow canola. Our girls, who have always lived in sight of the mountains and the ocean, were in awe of the wide open expanses. “I can see so far!” exclaimed Pearl.

We pulled into Drumheller in the evening and found our AirBnB with minimal difficult. (We were tired and it took us far too long to realize we couldn’t find the address because we were looking on the wrong side of the road.) Having booked somewhat last minute and it being a long weekend, our choices had been rather limited but we were able to find a cute little apartment downtown in Drumheller. The girls had a bedroom to share and we had a kitchen. This meant we could eat almost all of our meals at home while in Drumheller.

Drumheller isn’t a big town and it’s really gone whole hog on the dinosaur thing. There are Dino statues all over town and countless dinosaur references. The Royal Tyrell Museum is the main event but other businesses, many Dino-related, have sprung up as well. We were in Drumheller for 4 nights which gave us 3 full days and that was plenty of time to both explore the area and have some time to relax.

The Royal Tyrell Museum was our primary and first stop after getting to Drumheller. I had booked tickets in advance while we were still at home, which I don’t think was necessary in the end but gave us some peace of mind. We had booked in for 10:00am and that was a great start time. It was definitely getting busier as we were leaving. Bonus: the kids turned out to be free, another initiative to encourage Canadian travel.

(Museum tips in case you are a parent who has stumbled across my blog: 2-3 hours is probably the minimum amount of time you want to allow yourselves there. For us, this didn’t include any extra digs or other activities. You can’t bring food or drinks (water is okay) into the museum but there are a couple of spots where there are rooms to the side where you can stop, eat, and take a break. I would recommend it most for kids 6+. There were definitely lots of younger kids there and they seemed to be having fun but for my kids, their ages were perfect. It is really nice visiting a museum with kids who can read and who aren’t afraid of walking around for 2 hours)

At some point in our planning of this trip, I realized we were largely basing our choice to visit Drumheller on my husband’s childhood memories. “Is this actually a cool museum?” I asked. “Or should I set my expectations lower?” I brought this question to other adults who had visited more recently and was consistently reassured that, Yes, the museum is worth it.

And it is! It’s informative, engaging and really well laid out. It has an impressive number of original fossils and bones, as well as many casts. It was originally built with the idea of creating a space that was located right where scientists were making these discoveries and there is work being done right there, some of which you get to peek in on.

The biggest part of the museum is laid out in a sort of timeline, beginning at the very start of lifeforms and walking you through to the rise of mammals. We see these eras divided up by extinction events. One of the most interesting things to me was how each section had a globe where Alberta’s modern day location was shown in comparison to where the continents and landmasses were at that time in history. It was a simple, clear way of showing how continents shifted and land changed. For a long time, we could see Alberta floating out there in the ocean, explaining how so many sea fossils were found in a desert.

Honestly, I learned a lot and our girls were both engaged for the majority of the museum.

Outside the museum, we climbed up a small hill nearby to take in the views around.

After a morning of learning about dinosaurs, we decided to spend our afternoon getting up close and personal with a dinosaur. Fortunately, the World’s Largest Dinosaur was located within walking distance of our rental. $15 later, we were climbing a lot of stairs in a hot crowded stairwell and then standing in line to wait our turn in the Dino’s mouth.

The next morning we drove out to see the hoodoos. These are unique rock formations formed by erosion, found in desert areas. The landscape in this region is so different than anything we have where we live and it was fascinating to walk around and look at the rock. Pearl did a large geology unit in school this past year and so already knew a lot about the rocks we were seeing, which was fun.

We climbed around for a while (I was wearing sandals, which I do not recommend as footwear here) and were able to get up pretty high. There were some significant drop-offs!

From there we went to visit the Star Mine Suspension Bridge. There’s been a lot of mining in this area, historically, and so there is still a fair amount of infrastructure that you can see and visit.

As I’ve mentioned more than once, the landscape was simply so different from what we see all the time at home. We live in a beautiful area but this is a beautiful area in such a vastly differing way. We drove past farmland and desert. We stopped at various lookout points and simply took in the views. We dipped our feet in the Red Deer River. And, of course, we had to try out their version of a ferry. The Bleriot ferry is a cable ferry that crosses the river. It’s a free cable ferry and simply goes back and forth, taking probably less than 10 minutes.

We didn’t do a lot of other touristy things in Drumheller and didn’t visit any of the other big tourist spots. We heard good things about Barney’s but felt that it was geared a little younger than our girls. We decided to go mini-golfing and found that there were two nearby spots. Sadly, we chose the wrong one and had a terrible time mini-golfing in the ridiculously hot weather. We did visit the better mini golf spot (a place called The Sunny Spot) but opted to do their corn maze instead. (Pro parenting tip: make sure everyone uses the washroom before they enter the corn maze!) We went to the public pool in Drumheller, which was a novelty because it was outdoors and visited the local splash pad.

As I said, Drumheller has leaned into its dinosaur identity. Throughout the downtown area, there are dino footprints on the ground and dinosaur statues. The kids made it their mission to be photographed with every single dinosaur, so please enjoy the following evidence:

We left Drumheller nice and early on Sunday morning and headed back through the Rockies. We made the same stops on the way out, charging the car again in Calgary and Canmore. The weather had turned cloudier and Pearl had come down with a cold so we didn’t explore much at these stops but went to Walmart to buy Kleenex and stopped for hot chocolate in Canmore.

We did stop in Banff National Park for a quick hike at Johnston Canyon. It’s a short hike to a couple of waterfalls on a relatively easy trail. The neatest part was where the trail was built as a sort of bridge right along the cliffside. It was very crowded with literal line-ups to get to the main viewing points but we were able to find other spots to stop and see the sights. It was beautiful and we were glad to see it but it also reminded me of how spoiled we are where we live. We have access to many beautiful trails where you might see only a handful of people so having to move through crowds to enjoy nature was a bit strange to us.

Driving through Rockies again

We had wanted to spend some time camping in and near the Rockies but when all the national parks were full, we found a campground in Golden, BC. We booked one night there on the way out and two nights on the way back. Unfortunately, on our first night we discovered just how buggy Golden and this campground in particular were. We knew we’d be coming back on our way home and we pondered cancelling but couldn’t do so without being charged a fee. So we opted to make the best of it and bought some bug spray for the first time in our lives.

Again, our site was decently private and the facilities at the campground were nice and the groundhogs all over were fun to watch. The mosquitoes were just as bad as they’d been the first time through but we were better prepared mentally this time. We kept our tent sealed and once we were ready, we all slipped inside and spent the evening reading and drinking canned Moscow Mules (for Peter and I) in the tent.

The next morning, I woke up to the sound of thunder and Peter at the tent door. “I think you guys should get up,” he told me. We quickly woke the girls, gathered our breakfast things, and hurried across the field to a warming hut. While we didn’t need to keep warm, it was a small structure that provided both a reprieve from the mosquitoes and a dry spot as the rain began to pour. A tent is not the best place to be during a thunder and lightning storm. We ate breakfast alongside a group of tourists from Holland and told them there were better places to visit in British Columbia.

From there we began to plan our full day in Golden. It was too buggy to hang out at the campground and rain showers were short but frequent. We explored down by the river (Rose fell in a little) then hid from the rain at a local coffee shop. We walked around and poked in stores (found a great bookstore). We picnicked at a playground while we waited for the pool to open. We swam at the local outdoor pool but then had to leave when the lightning started again. So we went bowling and paid way too much. Finally, we went out for dinner and spent another evening hiding out and reading in our tent. We survived Golden.

The next morning we had breakfast at a great bakery we found (next to the bookstore) and then get out of town. Overall, our experience of Golden was not great. I have an inkling it might be better in the winter if you’re into snow sports (fewer bugs). We made it an adventure to get through the day in good spirits but we also found that aside from the bugs and the weather, we found both the customer service and the food lacking in town.

After we left Golden, we drove through Glacier National Park where we stopped to explore the Loop Brook trail. This was an easy but rewarding hike that followed the former loop of the CN Railway as it curved through dense forest over mountains. The plaques along the way were informative and explained what a feat of engineering it had been to bring the rail line through this region. Although this route was discontinued in the 1970s, many of the stone pillars that were built in the 19th century for the railway still stand and were truly impressive to view. We also enjoyed that we had this trail to ourselves.

And of course we had to stop for ice cream and to view baby cows outside of Sicamous!

We stayed that night in Salmon Arm and I seem to have almost no pictures of this particular junction of the trip. A highlight was the fact that we stayed at a hotel that not only had a pool but a waterslide. Obviously we spent hours there both when we arrived and the next morning after complimentary hotel breakfast (with only one minor burn from the waffle iron). We had a slow morning and explored downtown Salmon Arm again while we charged the car. We stopped again in Kamloops to charge and have a side of the road picnic and from there our trip home diverged from the route we took on our way out.

Peter has long wanted to drive the Duffy Lake Road and so, feeling like our trip home was getting a bit repetitive, we decided this was the perfect moment. This took us up through Lillooet and then homeward via Pemberton and Whistler, rather than back through Hope and the Fraser Valley. (We also hoped to avoid worse traffic on this route.)

Folks, I didn’t take many pictures but this was a stunning route to drive. The views were beautiful and the winding road with little towns along the way was gorgeous. We were stunned at how different the scenery was from our own region, even as we got closer to home. This is a much more desert area and one that once had a lot of mining. We stopped for ice cream in Cache Creek but our destination for the final night of trip was just outside of Lillooet.

We arrived too late in the evening to see much of the town of Lillooet but what we saw has us convinced we want to return. We were able to charge our car while picking up some grocery store sandwiches. We went across the street to find a spot to eat them near the railway and unfortunately, Rose had a run-in with a cactus. We unwittingly had walked through a cactus patch and poor Rosie got the worst of it. We’re still not sure how cactuses work but somehow she had them stuck all up one leg, despite the fact that they grew low to the ground. Peter and I immediately started pulling them off here, only to realize that their barbs were then sticking into us. Peter ran back to the car for pliers and I picked Rose up out of the patch and into safety. Turns out cacti also leave tiny, nearly invisible barbs in once pulled out so we also spent time in the parking lot, Peter with his headlamp on as it grew dark, pulling out barbs from legs and fingers with a pair of tweezers. A stranger very kindly pulled over and asked if we needed help, saying she lived nearby and had a first aid kit but we were mostly okay by then. So watch out for cactus but the town is very pretty.

We camped that night near Seton Lake at a lovely little campsite we found. We hadn’t booked in advance but had no trouble getting a spot. We explored the area a little, walking along Seton Lake and the dock. This area was dammed by BC Hydro and we found something we’d never seen before – bridge built for one river to cross over another!

We’ll definitely be returning to this area!

The next morning we drove onward and reached Pemberton around mid-day. We stopped to charge the car again and to stretch our legs and have some food. We drove through Whistler, stopping only to visit one of our favourite thrift stores and headed on to Squamish. Here we took the car through a carwash (the first time for the kids). Peter vacuumed the car’s inside while the girls and I wiped down interior surfaces and cleared out trash and made sure we returned the car in clean condition. From there it was a quick drive to the ferry terminal where we returned the car and were on our way home.

In planning this trip and now looking back on the experience, Peter and I feel that we are in a very sweet spot of parenting. Our kids want to spend time with us, they’re interested in a variety of experiences, and they’re up for new adventures. At the same time, they can deal with some disappointments here and there and they have the ability to bounce back from tough moments like having to leave a pool in a lightning storm, driving a little further before we stop for a meal, or getting attacked by a cactus. We loved getting to show them new places and the natural beauty of our country and getting to experience those sights in a fresh way through their eyes. It’s made us eager to plan out our next adventures and to aim for even bigger trips.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading along!