The Coquihala includes a monstrous hill, reducing lesser vehicles to shameful gear hunting. No such problem exists for the 210-hp 3.0 V6. Its silky smooth shifting 5-speed automatic always seems to find the right gear to exploit all 220 lb-ft of torque. The engine has a fine exhaust note at full throttle as well, barely distinguishable in a car that feels like a rolling isolation booth. A 0.28 coefficient of drag keeps wind noise to a minimum while new sound deadening material absorbs noise, preferable over blocking it.

It doesn't take long to put the toll booth behind us and approach the town of Merritt, one of the driest places in Canada. Today is exceptionally hot, hardly noticeable in the cool, comfortable Lexus until we emerge onto the baking asphalt of a local gas station. It's not that we already need fuel for the car, which is quite miserly at 7.4 L/100 km highway, but rather our stash of 'junk fuel' isn't cutting it. Grabbing a few cheese and pepperoni sticks, some chips and licorice, we're off toward Kamloops.

I must have driven this route close to a hundred times, and I hardly ever stop in Kamloops. It's a wonderful city stretching along picturesque Shuswap River, but it just never seems to fit into our schedule. Outside of Kamploops traveling east toward Salmon Arm we approach the turnoff for Monty Lake, that will take us through Falkland and then on to Vernon, if we were going that way. This is a marvelous 2-lane highway with enough twists and turns to make up for the rest of the journey's 4-lane monotony. The ES 300's new larger front disc brakes with dual-piston calipers feel more capable than the previous car, bringing the big sedan down in speed immediately with very little fade overall.