The Province of British Columbia operate a great many beautiful parks. Rates are very reasonable. Depending upon your site services you may pay anywhere from $9.00 to $28.00 per night. Nearly all have restrooms with flush toilets, showers, nice large sites with good solid tables with table tops 8 cm (3 inches) thick. Each site is equipped with a fire ring. You will need to watch for the water supply on your way through the parks to your site and fill up if needed. You can trust the supply as the Provincial Park water supply is well monitored. Some sites have on site hosts.
Most Provincial Park campgrounds do not have electricity or water at individual sites. Water is always available in the park and most have dumping stations. Services are available at Steelhead and Juniper Beach near Kamloops.
The most popular sites will be serviced by concessionaires who will come around to your site in the evening to collect the fee and sell firewood. If you want a fire I suggest you buy it as it is not only fairly dry but it is split for you.
I should also note that the parks people really frown on cutting down a tree for firewood and by doing so you could find your self in very deep trouble.
Of course there are a great many privately owned RV parks. Expect to have more services like electric power and water, cable TV etc. The rates are variable depending upon the quality of the park and the services offered. You can expect to pay anywhere from $24.00 up to $45.00
If you have arrived at Hope and it's around one in the afternoon, I would suggest staying in the Fraser Valley (runs from Hope to Vancouver) for the rest of the day and get an earlier start the next morning for Whistler.
There are privately operated parks at Hope, Harrison Hot Springs (5 of them) Heerling Island before Chilliwack and a few more here and there.
A large Provincial park is located at Cultas Lake. The three campgrounds all are exceptional but are very popular by the locals. You may have a chance of getting in from Monday through Thursday morning without a reservation, however weekends are mostly sold out very early.
There is a Provincial Park Reservation system. The phone number is 1-800-689-9025.
You can get to Cultas Lake by taking the 119B exit from Hope onto Vedder Mountain road, drive through town until you cross the iron bridge across the Chilliwack river. Continue along 1 km (½ mile) to the stop light. Turn left up the hill and follow the Columbia Valley road for 6 km (3 ½ miles) to the park entrance.
The Provincial Park sites, on the whole are nice and large with plenty of room for motor homes, travel trailers and tenting. Some sections may be marked "available for reservation". This means that if you park in that site and the park fills up overnight you may need to move next day.
Note. The reason I suggest you stay overnight here is you may run into the heavy supper hour traffic going through Vancouver which tends to be quite congested from 3 to 8 pm. Better to wait until morning.
Another reason is that you don't want to travel from Vancouver to Whistler in the dark or you will miss the totally incredible scenery along the route. We class the Sea to Sky highway as one of the worlds most scenic highways.
There is a scarcity of full service RV Parks along the Whistler corridor. There are a few Provincial campgrounds but in Whistler itself there is only on RV park. Riverside RV Resort & Campground. It has 107 sites and open year round. Motorhome travel allows for many options.
BC Parks operate several very nice campgrounds. Britannia Beach is a small one but a beauty. Just before you reach Britannia you will see the sign for Porteau Cove Provincial Park. Try it, you may get lucky and find a site. It's a popular site.
Alice Lake is a good park with large sites. 13 km (7 miles) past Squamish on your right.
Nairn falls is another BC parks campground. Approximately 30 minutes north of Whistler on your right. Nice big sites. The falls are a great attraction.
Birkenhead is another BC park north of Mount Currie. Set on a beautiful lake.
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