Montreal to Vancouver on the Trans-Canada - CanaDream

Twenty nights and 5,860 kilometres from Montreal to Vancouver in a motorhome, the length of the Trans-Canada Highway from Quebec to the Pacific.

Mattawa comes first on the Ottawa River, where the old fur trade canoe route west ran and the Laurentians give way to the Canadian Shield, then Sault Ste Marie at the locks between Lake Huron and Lake Superior, the busiest lock system on the continent.

Marathon and Ignace follow along the north shore of Lake Superior, the most dramatic stretch of the crossing, where the road runs above cliffs over a freshwater lake the size of a sea. Kenora and Winnipeg come next, then the prairies at Regina and Medicine Hat, Calgary, and Banff and Lake Louise in the Rockies. Kamloops sits in the dry interior, where sagebrush replaces forest, before the Fraser Canyon drops the route down to Vancouver.

The motorhome and the day-by-day plan come from CanaDream, and the hire is priced live per vehicle rather than per person; campsites, fuel, ferries, park fees and activities are all extra, with insurance options priced at booking. Twenty-one days for 5,860 kilometres means steady driving days throughout and this is a crossing rather than a tour. The season runs roughly June to September. This is a one-way hire the width of a country, so a relocation fee is worth checking at booking. Starting in Montreal rather than Toronto adds the Quebec and Ottawa Valley leg at the beginning, which is the better opening of the two and costs nothing in distance. Anyone with a month should give Lake Superior and the Rockies two nights each.