We had been looking at a trip to Canada for many years but finally bit the bullet earlier in the year and decided it was time. Barbara wanted to do a train trip and a cruise and I thought well why not bung them in the Canada trip? More interesting than doing them here maybe, so the cruise turned into the 7 day Alaska trip out of Vancouver and the train trip a 3 day trans-Canada jaunt from Jasper to Toronto so we could go to Niagra Falls too. I wanted to drive the Rockies rather than do the Rocky Mountaineer train trip so we both were accommodated. Sydney to Vancouver, 10 hours on the plane, maybe we can break it, a few days in Hawaii? Sure, both ways? Why not, a nice little rest on the way back! So with a large chunk out of our savings
and all the paperwork done we were set.Of course I had old cars and vans on my mind right from the off
and I spent some time looking for car museums in Canada on the www. They don’t seem to have a lot but there were two I wanted to fit in if I could, one in Alberta which I’d heard great things about and the other at Oshawa near Toronto which had two Vauxhalls listed in their collection. I also found that Alberta has the only town in the world actually called Vauxhall and I thought we might be able to slip in there too. Then I realised that if we were in Toronto we weren’t that far from Detroit where the only other Aussie built 34 Vauxhall Big Six roadster the same as mine resides, could we maybe slip across the border 
Nothing found as far as vintage van (sorry, ‘trailer’) site relating to Canada so it was just see what came along. We thought we might even get to stay overnight in a trailer park in an older van, maybe an Airstream 
So, starting at the beginning I guess Hawaii needs a mention. Our accommodation was in Honolulu at Waikiki Beach, all very nice I suppose but too commercial and it seems if you want to see a nicer Hawaii you go to one of the other islands. Not much in the way of old cars and certainly NO trailers
Our bus driver on a tour mentioned the lack of trailers and RVs saying there was no need for them, if you want to go camping you just do it, pull up on the side of the road anywhere and camp, put up a tent, bit of tarp etc, and they do just that come the weekend. And of course you can circumnavigate the island in a day! The only trailers we were likely to see would be something to do with a film crew, of which there were many, and sure enough when I did see one on our return visit it belonged to a film company. No magazines relating to RVs or trailers in any of the shops either 
Our biggest culture shock was the coffee, crap coffee
even in the cafes. In our hotel room there was only a drip coffee maker with coffee bags, tea bags were supplied too but no jug, guess you made it in the coffee machine as I did but you MUST remember to remove the old coffee bag first 
No milk, only whitener. “You want milk sir? Go to the convenience store and buy some!” When in Rome, suffer And, only paper or foam cups in the rooms to drink from Maybe Canada would be more civilised. No, same deal with the coffee in our hotel in Vancouver
Did I mention no spoons either, just plastic rod for a stirring stick, bloody backward Plenty of Starbucks though, shame we don’t like it. With a spare day in Vancouver before commencing the cruise we booked up for a bus tour to Vancouver Island and the Capital, Victoria. Early pick up and out to the ferry terminal and line up, some time for a pit stop and look about so I headed straight out into the line up of RV’s and caravans getting ready for the trip. We hadn’t seen many until this point but I was soon staggered by the size of their outfits. There were a couple of 5th wheelers and I had a chat to one driver, stepped back to take a photo and as I did something of interest (SOI) just appeared in the background on the view screen
The ‘something of interest’ (I’ve bunged an arrow on it in the photo) turned out to be a Boler fibreglass caravan, a bit of a shrunken Sunliner, made from the late 60s until the late 80s according to web site and like the Sunliner old moulds were used by other makers too, more on that later. A modern version is still manufactured by Trillium trailers in Calgary, Alberta.
) and the chap towing it had his wife and two little girls with him and they were off for a week on the island, said it was light and towed like a dream, the tow car was only a regular station wagon. As it turned out the vans were quite popular and over our 7 days on the road though the Rockies we saw 8 in all. A search on the web found they had a Bolerama for them in Canada back in July, an interesting time I’m sure. Do we have a ‘Sunerama’ for Sunliners 
The trip to the island was good, we toured around, went to Butchard Gardens and spent a couple of hours in Victoria looking about then back on the ferry, our van excitement for the day was the Boler, nothing else of interest appeared. No RV or trailer magazines to be found either
Next day it was on the liner for our cruise to Alaska with first stop at Juneau, the capital. With access only by sea or plane I didn’t expect to see much there of interest and I wasn’t disappointed! Not somewhere I’d want to live, a half day visit was fine. A medical emergency the next day on the ship required evacuation of a passenger to hospital. They had to be picked up and flown back to Vancouver as the ship had better medical facilities than Juneau
Next stop was Skagway and it proved to be a haven for RVs and trailers as it has a major highway linking it to the real world! More about that in the next instalment.
George
Maybe because of it’s location a lot of people may use it as a short cut rather than walking around. I didn’t go for a wander about but could see a newish Airstream and a few RVs and from the photo you will see it’s not a bad outlook on life to wake up to 
On the footpath near the entrance was the oddest item I've ever seen, a timber pergola with railing and a nice porcelain toilet bowl attached to the floor 
but had to take a photo.
housed in a new $5 million dollar half roundhouse with only a couple of carriages for company. It was to steam to Vancouver the following weekend but I had to miss it 
The other interesting thing in town was the Fire Hall (station) which featured the full frontal of a 57 Chev, a strange decoration for a Fire Station I thought but it seems to be the town logo.