Hi all, I am from Australia. My Wife and I are planning a trip to Canada and US in September and will be in Victoria 1st, 2nd , and 3rd September and Vancouver till the 6th. Can you please email me if you know of interesting things for Car Buffs to do. Car Shows, Museums and car collections etc. my email is. mick_corvair_64@hotmail.com Thanks Mick Ps. Check my profile.
Vancouver Is Huge, more a m*** confusion place and Victoria , well, its Really Nice.. The Whole Island is Nice.. check out the Boushard ?? Gardens there.. . lots of car activities all over..Vancouver and area are wide spread.. you will need a rental car for sure.. Im sure theres a listing of different events on Google for those areas..
Too bad you won't be in Victoria near the end of July when Northwest Duece Days will be held. Last time there were over 400 '32s from all over North America. There are no dedicated car museums, but the Saanich historical society has a nice acreage of old artifacts and an expansive foot gauge model railway system that you could get a ride on if you time things right. About an hour north of Victoria there is a forestry related museum with a full size steam railway layout and a bunch of old machinery. Again, no real hot rod relevant stuff. I checked the car show calendar for the dates you will be here, but there isn't much happening. There are quite a few old cars running around Victoria though. The A&W burger restaurants have cruise ins in Thursday nights, so you might be able to see a few oldies there. edit. just checked website, Victoria a&w cruise night it Wednesdays.
I had a look too and there is not much during the week. Vancouver doesn't have any car museums either. There is a fairly large show on Sept 8th. (After you leave) It's not the most HAMB friendly show as they allow EVERYTHING to go and don't park the cars in any order at all but some times it isn't too bad. If you want to go to the A&W on Thurs. night the one in Maple Ridge is usually the best and one of the only ones that does it. Where are you staying in Vancouver? Right Downtown or one of the other suburbs?
I love cars, but BC has a lot more to offer in terms of natural beauty that steel just cant match. I was fortunate enough to take a drive up past Whistler and back down some logging roads along Lillooet Lake. A few photos are posted at http://imageevent.com/****gy/bc?n=0&z=2&c=4&x=1&m=24&w=0&p=0
Weather is usually great that time of year. Victoria and the whole island is very scenic for sure, I like the old highway along the east side of the island by the ocean....beautiful.
My wife and I being old desert rats ,really enjoyed Victoria. The gardens fantastic but we used a tour bus in the late afternoon and enjoyed the spectacle in daylight and darkness with the lighting. Most of Victoria can be seen by foot or carriage. A car can be a PIA if you are using the ferry system as you generally have to have the car in line and then you are stuck afoot until the ferry departs. I didn't see much car activity while visiting , wife was happy with all the sights though. People,service and food were great too . Would I go back ? in a heartbeat !!
Not car related but one of the best touristy things to do in Vancouver is take the cable car 3000 feet up Grouse mountain for lunch or dinner - spectacular views day or night. If you have a rental car, or bus tour, take the drive to Whistler on the Sea to Sky highway, the name says it all.
not much car stuff around Victoria, but the weekend you're there is the 19th annual Blues Bash right down by the inner harbour.
Langley Good Time cruise-in, Sept 7... biggest show on the west coast always way over 1000 cars... look it up
Damn straight, 110%, and I have lived here all my life. I bet I have driven north across the Port Mann bridge 1000 times, and on a sunny spring morning that view of the mountains and the fraser river STILL knocks me out.The view from Cypress Bowl at night is something too, and if you head up the valley towards Hope and into the fraser canyon, or the other way through Manning Park to Princeton, I promise you will never forget it. This whole area has STUNNING scenery. I also highly recommend the Trev Deely motorcycle museum if you have ANY interest in bikes at all. If you are going to hit a Thursday night cruise night, the one in Maple Ridge is probably the one to go to. We have one here in Surrey, but its tiny compared to the one in Maple Ridge. You can also hit Mission raceway, the fastest little drag strip in the NW. Scenery wise, a trip out to Harrison Hot Springs, Harrison Bay and Deer Lake, or Alouette Lake (If you go here, take a little detour up the little side road into Mike Lake as well) north of Maple Ridge is good, or head East on Dewdney Trunk Rd. out of Maple Ridge to the old Stave Lake Power Station. If you are going to go out to Mission Raceway, and dont need to hurry, this back way along Dewdney Trunk and up Stave Lake Rd. is the way to go. The natural scenery around the whole area is just stunning.
heres my favorite place to stay on the south island. Its in Saanich, about a 1/2 hour north of Victoria. The deal is, theres 3-4 old separate cedar cabins across the back that are still there from when this place opened up in the fifties. They are GREAT. Really quiet and dark at night, and they have a full kitchen. This place fronts onto the ocean, you just walk across the road and you are right there. You can walk along the seawall into town. The cabins are a bit hard to get, they get booked pretty quick, but you might get lucky. I only recommend it if you can get a cabin. Otherwise, nothing wrong with it, but nothing really special either, just another motel. But the cabins are really great. When I was a kid, cabins like this were everywhere in SW BC, now they are practically extinct. If you go to the "About the inn" tab, and click on "site plan" the cabins are units 111-115. http://thecedarwood.ca/
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