Wind River wrote:
We are planning this route on our way to Alaska.
We have never taken your exact route, but have been in the Castlegar-Trail-Rossland area to the west and the Cranbrook-Windermere-Radium Hot Springs area to the east. And, last summer, we used Hwy. 97 from Kamloops to Prince George.
The only problem with Hwy 97 is that most of it is up on a plateau that is not particularly scenic. The first part, from Kamloops to Chasm is interesting, especially to a geologist. And, you are close enough to the Fraser River to have some real topography at Williams Lake and Quesnel. But the rest is mostly slightly rolling, tree-covered glacial till interspersed with a few small, shallow ponds. If you have time to burn, Hwy 5 from Kamloops to Valemount might be more interesting. But, never having been on that route, I'll have to leave it to the local experts for a comparison of the two routes.
If you have already been to Banff and Jasper and are not coming back from Alaska through Alberta, your route sounds like a very scenic one. In that case, I would like to suggest a return to Wyoming through the Okanagan Valley--Vernon through Kelowna to Osoyoos. It has beautiful lakes, vineyard-covered hillsides, great food, and wonderful wine. Sort of a Canadian version of the Lake Como region of Italy . . . but they all speak English. We enjoyed it so much last summer that the Okanagan is now on our list of favorite places for a return visit. And, at Osoyoos, you can turn east on Hwy 3 to Castlegar if you want to revisit parts of the Kootenays that you missed on the way up.
If you haven't been to Banff and Jasper, forget all that I just said and go there, either going to Alaska or coming back. We had been there before, but we still saved it for last on our 2013 Alaska trip. That way we would have one more gorgeous, wildlife-filled area to look forward to before getting home from our RV "trip-of-a-lifetime." And we are glad we did because we got closer to, and took more photos of, wildlife in Jasper NP than we did in Alaska (with the possible exception of our Kenai Fjords cruise at Seward and the 125 photos my wife took of a mama grizzly and her 4 cubs in Valdez).
Whichever route you decide on, you can't really go wrong. Every route has some pros and cons but BC is so scenic, you can't help but enjoy the trip!