One Epic Family RV Road Trip Through The Canadian Rockies

The first time I visited the Canadian Rockies in the mid 90’s I was 20 years old and a full time College student. I was there for 2 weeks over the Christmas break visiting friends and fell in love with the area.

After many years of thinking about it, I finally made it back in the summer of 2018. This time I traveled with my family and for the first time we would be renting an RV. Even though I was excited about the opportunity to try something different for our family vacation I wasn’t sure if we would end up having the time of our lives or never speaking to each other again.

When I started thinking about what our trip through the Rockies would look like, my initial plan was to rent a car in Edmonton and then drive to Jasper, Lake Louise, Banff and Drumheller before making our way back to Edmonton. We would book a hotel and stay a few nights in town at each destination. It sounded like a great idea at the time but there were a few problems we would have to work out in order to make this work.

The first was that we had been spoiled on previous getaways when I worked for a vacation rental company. One of the perks was being able to rent a cheap 2-bedroom condo giving us a separate sleeping area for the kids and a fully-equipped kitchen to cook meals while we were away. This ensured that everyone ate and sleep well and that we had extra space to lessen the sibling bickering factor. Since I wasn’t working there anymore in 2018 we didn’t have access to that perk nor did we have a large vacation budget to rent a full priced 2-bedroom condo in one of the most expensive vacation destinations in Canada.

The second problem was that I had almost forgotten about what happened the last time we took an epic road trip by car from Ontario to the East Coast of Canada. It was then that we discovered our youngest was prone to motion sickness during long car rides so we spent a fair amount of time making extra stops for fresh air and cleaning vomit from the back seat of the car (I’m very thankful that we decided to drive our own car and not a rental for that vacation!).

To be honest I was starting to worry about how we were going to make this epic vacation road trip work for everyone in the family.

I started researching SUV rentals (the higher up our youngest is in the car to see out the window, the less likely she is to become car sick) and somehow googled my way onto an RV rental website. When I ran the idea by my husband Joe, he thought I was crazy. We have friends who own RVs and they camp every weekend for 5 months of the year but it was not really something that interested us before. We were not campers and neither of us have driven an RV before let alone rented one for a family vacation.

After talking to our girls about the idea, everyone was in favour of renting an RV and I was on the phone the next day putting down our deposit!

After spending 10 days in an RV driving through the Rockies we all agreed (even my at first skeptical husband) that we will be taking another RV vacation again in the future and here’s why:

It gave us the extra space that we were used to! I’m pretty sure that our RV was not any larger in square footage than a traditional hotel room but everyone had their own separate sleeping area and hang out spot when it was raining or in the evenings before bed.

When we were driving I could separate the girls most of the time so that they weren’t fighting over who was taking up more space on the middle arm rest. Ahhh…peace and quiet!

It was convenient! Having access to a kitchen, toilet and a napping area was a blessing where facilities were not easily available on this road trip, especially with an 8 year old who waits until the absolute last second to let us know that she has to use the washroom.

One of the highlights of the trip was our 232 km drive along the Columbia Icefields Parkway from Jasper to Banff. Conde Nast Traveller rated it as one of the top drives in the world and we agree 100%. The scenery of mountain peaks, sprawling valleys, waterfalls and turquoise lakes along with the view of the Athabasca Glacier is worth taking as much time as possible driving along it to soak everything in.

We spent more time outdoors! Because we were in an RV we had to stay at a campsite in one of the National Parks. At a hotel, we would have spent time swimming in the pool or watching TV at night. We were hoping to have nightly campfires but there were still forest fires burning in British Columbia resulting in a fire ban at both campgrounds until it was lifted on our last night there. Despite the fire ban, we still spent more time outdoors than we would have otherwise.

When we arrived back home to Ontario and reviewed our photos we all agreed that it was one of the best family vacations that we’ve ever taken. In addition to the convenience, extra space and being closer to nature, we also loved being able to pack and unpack only once.

The girls are already thinking about where we can go for our next family RV vacation.

If you think you might be ready to consider your first RV family vacation, check out our road trip with confidence in your first RV rental blog post here.

We would love to hear about your RV vacation adventures. If you’ve rented an RV for a vacation before where did you go? If you could travel anywhere in the world with an RV rental for a vacation, where would you go? Please share in the comments section below.