Point the van north up Highway 99 first. The Stawamus Chief throws a 700-metre granite wall over Howe Sound, and Alice Lake sits a few kilometres past it with two sandy beaches to park beside. That swim lake is your first night out of Metro Vancouver, 13 km north of Squamish and 71 km up from the Lions Gate Bridge, and it books out through July, August and September, weekdays included. Sites go up on camping.bcparks.ca in a rolling three-month window, with the new inventory landing at 7 a.m. Pacific. Book the site first and the van second.
That short loop is what most Vancouver renters actually do, and the rest of it sits one page over: the Chief's three summits, Garibaldi's alpine lakes, and Porteau Cove's waterfront sites are all on the Squamish lander. Two kilometres south on the same highway, Shannon Falls drops 335 metres a few minutes' walk from the pullout. It's day-use only, so you look and then sleep back at Alice. The North Shore hikes, Lynn Canyon and Grouse and the Seymour valley, are on the North Vancouver page, and the ferry start plus the Sunshine Coast run belong to Vancouver's own lander.
The other two weeks turn away from the corridor. A ferry west puts you on Vancouver Island for beach sand and Pacific surf. The Coquihalla east climbs to the warm lakes of the Okanagan. Pick one, because a BC van week rarely does all three. If you're only out for a couple of nights, the Fraser Valley lakes are the Lower Mainland's own weekend, with Golden Ears on the Maple Ridge page and Cultus Lake on Chilliwack's.
The ferry to Vancouver Island
Vancouver Island is the full week, not the weekend. The reserved sailing from Tsawwassen to Swartz Bay runs about an hour and thirty-five minutes, and from there it's either east-coast sand or a Highway 4 push out to the Long Beach surf. Book the crossing the week you lock the van dates. Summer vehicle space goes fast on Thursday and Friday afternoons, Sunday afternoons, and long weekends.
Rathtrevor Beach is the Island's signature first night, 3 km south of Parksville off Highway 19 exit 51, where the tide pulls back almost a kilometre over warm sand and every site needs a summer reservation. Parksville and the Qualicum beaches have their own lander. Victoria's page takes Goldstream and the Sooke and Juan de Fuca coast, and Courtenay's has Strathcona's alpine.
Anything taller or longer than a compact van books differently on those sailings, so it's worth pricing both shapes before you commit. The rigs that run the same routes are on our British Columbia RV page.
For the far coast, Green Point in Pacific Rim National Park Reserve is the base above Long Beach, 12 km north of the Ucluelet-Tofino junction on Highway 4, open May through mid-October with a seven-night cap. Parks Canada books on its own system and its own calendar, so that reservation is a separate errand from the BC Parks one. The Long Beach and Ucluelet corridor is covered on the Nanaimo page.
The Okanagan lakes, east over the Coquihalla
The Okanagan is the dry-belt week: warm lakes, vineyard benches, ponderosa on the canyon rims, three or four hours inland from the coast. From the Lower Mainland it's a climb east over the Highway 5 Coquihalla, then the Highway 97C Connector down to the lake near Kelowna. Bear Creek is night one on the west shore, off Westside Road nine kilometres up Highway 97, with more than 400 metres of sandy beach, and every site there needs a reservation in peak season.
Central Okanagan camping is on the West Kelowna lander. Penticton's covers the south lake and Skaha, and Vernon's has Kalamalka's marl-blue water at the north end. Kamloops is the quieter interior overnight, north of the lakes on Highway 5 if you're routing toward the Rockies. Paul Lake sits 5 km north of town, then 19 km up the paved Pinantan Road, a sandy beach under Douglas fir with the Gibraltar Rock trail above it. The rest of the dry belt is on the Kamloops page.
Closer to home, and around the province
Plenty of BC renters never leave the Lower Mainland for night one. Abbotsford, Surrey, Langley, Coquitlam, and Burnaby each point to their nearest lake or provincial park on their own page. On the Island, Duncan sits in the Cowichan Valley south of Nanaimo, and Comox anchors the north Island near Strathcona.
When to book, and what fills first
Van season runs June through September, which is exactly when campsites and ferry decks get tight. For a July or August trip that means watching the three-month window open for the park you want, then booking the ferry the same week. Long weekends pile vans onto the Tsawwassen and Horseshoe Bay sailings, and mid-summer fire bans in the Kamloops and Okanagan fire centres can shut off campfires even when a site is open. Before a coast or interior drive, check DriveBC for Highway 99, Highway 5, and Highway 97C.