Motorcycle Adventures

Another nice sunny day in Nelson. We enjoyed a leisurely morning, and a nice breakfast at the Circle Cafe. After walking back up to the motel, we picked up our things, paid for our room and said good bye.

We were excited to go camping, and the temperature was 19 degrees – finally warm enough for us to camp.

When we got there however the temperature had dropped from town to 15 degrees at the campsite. Being right next to such a big lake must have cooled down the air enough to drop the temp so much. I was very unsure about camping. The temp would drop at least 10 degrees overnight, and we aren’t equipped to camp in 5 degree weather. After Marie, the owner of the campsite went and printed the weather forecast for us (which had highs of 19 for the next week) we decided it probably wasn’t going to get any warmer here and we packed up our tent.

It is sad to be on a trip where we wanted to camp all the time, and end up staying in motels, but there wasn’t much we could do about it. We were however happy to have experienced the Toad Rock Campsite, and most of all to have met Marie.

Marie has every detail taken care of. She is great to talk to and cares about her campers in a truly genuine way. She was great to communicate with over email, and while we were there she was bringing us fire wood and making sure everything was going well. She has a relaxed no stress way of running her campsite that we really enjoyed. I couldn’t think of a better personality pf philosophy to run a campsite than Marys. Well be back for sure, and highly recommend Toad Rock.

After leaving the campsite we decided to ride on to Ainsworth Hotsprings. There we found the Mermaid motel, which has an interesting history. The original building which is still use, and is the oldest building on the Kootenay Lake still in use. It was built in 1871 and is currently used to house workers affordably, who work for the hotsprings. Originally, it was called the welcome in, and fed passengers who came to the hotsprings on a sternwheeler.

We were greeted by the most enthusiastic, pie baking owner. And we paid for our “sleeping unit” (motel room), unloaded our bikes, and rode on to Kaslo.

Kaslo is a wonderful cute town about 25 km from Ainsworth.

A great place to visit, it has an old paddle wheeler called the S.S. Moyie. Built in 1898, It has been been restored to its original condition. We arrived just before they closed and had the opportunity to quickly go aboard and have a look around. It took a lot of photos. It was really interesting! Sorry the photos aren’t the best as we were in such a big rush

Afterwards we found a little restaurant, and after sitting down at very fancy tables, and looking over the hugh expensive fancy menu, we ordered a lemonaid slushie. A little awkward.

After our 12 dollar slushies, we had a quick walk though town, bought various forms of sugar and fat for breakfast (yum) and then went back to our bikes.

We rode back to Ainsworth, changed, and went to the hotsprings! Oh they are nice. Like a warm bath tub. Now in my opinion, all pools should be this temperature. It was nice to relax in the warm water. There are these interesting caves, where the water apparently comes from. You can walk right into them. Its a big loop, but despite all the excitement created in the ads, there isn’t anything to do in them other than gawk at how gross the walls of the cave are, and walk though them. There isn’t even a place to sit.

After our “swim” we enjoyed a nice dinner at the hotel retaurant, and then went back to our sleepinf unit for some satalite TV.