Seeing friends from Whidbey!!

Summerland, BC to Nelson, BC and back to Summerland

(to meet friends from home)

September 14 - September 18, 2016

We left Summerland and headed to Nelson, BC to meet our Whidbey Island friends Harriet and Russ.  They were on their way to Banff and beyond and since we were "in the area - i.e. BC" we agreed on Nelson as a convenient meeting place.

On our way we had to take a ferry across Upper Arrow Lake from Needles to Fauquier, BC.  It's a tiny ferry which runs on a cable from one side to the other.  There's no cabin or anywhere to go but it only takes 10 minutes or so to go across.  It's a beautiful lake and we happened to hit it on a sunny day as you can see from the pictures.

Looking North from the ferry.

Looking South from the ferry.

Nelson is a cute town with lots of interesting looking businesses and restaurants and the absolutely busiest coffee house we have ever seen.  The line was literally out the door when we arrived!  I'm not sure how they did it but they moved the line along at a quick pace and Harriet said the coffee was excellent - high praise coming from her.  Sadly - we didn't take a single picture in Nelson so I stole this one off the internet so you can see what a picturesque place it is.

Nelson is located on the west arm of Kootenay Lake in the Selkirk Mountains.
It is the home of Selkirk College

The four of us did a circle tour north from Nelson through Silverton to the old mining town of Sandon.  It was supposed to be a ghost town but people were still living there and there was a fun museum which detailed the history of the town and it's early inhabitants.

The museum, which is in pretty good shape, stands next to some derelict buildings.

 Like so many places, it initially flourished due to the efforts of one person.  The silver mining kept it going for awhile until the mines couldn't produce enough to make it profitable.

The Silversmith Powerhouse is the oldest continually-operating hydro plant in
Canada and one of the oldest of its type in the world.  It was built in 1897 to
supply power to the Silversmith mine in Sandon and it continues to supply power 
to the local inhabitants of the area as well as to a mine which still functions nearby.

From Sandon we continued around the loop to Kaslo, a very cute town located on the edge of Kootenay Lake which, from pictures we saw, used to be a very busy port town with boats hauling ore, timber and whatever else.  We didn't really see the whole town but it felt to us like one that would be fun to explore in depth.  We had an excellent lunch at the Treehouse restaurant before continuing back to Nelson.

The next morning we went our separate ways with Harriet and Russ heading on to Yoho National Park (on our recommendation) before going to Banff as we headed back to Summerland to have our solar charging system checked out.