Hot Water and Hookers

Short Version:
Seats for sale, we're told to go to someone else's town, Dunster School rides again. We end up in hot water and on shaky ground, then flawlessly execute a stealth mission. Hookers.

Long Version:
Nelson, BC seems like a pretty cool town. The local cinema was selling their seats at $1 each, and we saw several pairs of young people staggering out of the theatre carrying a row between them. The leftover pesos from the Mexico trip were finally swapped for real moneys*, which we then promptly spent at the bike store on replacement tyres and gear cables and other necessities. The staff there invited us to come ride with them in a couple of days, but went on to say that if they were us they'd be off to ride at New Denver and Revelstoke and Salmon Arm instead.

So we left, right after we ate delicious foods at the wifi-enabled Hare Krisna restaurant, and washed our clothes at the laundromat with the enormous television and the broken toilet.

On the way north up the western shore of Kootenay Lake we cheered the radio-borne news that the Dunster community had been successful in their battle to save the local school from closure, and it was a happy pair that meandered into the Ainsworth Hot Springs and soaked away several hours in the hot and not-so-hot pools. The complex has a really cool (hot!) cave system in behind a pair of tiled arches. The tiling soon gives way to natural-looking rock walls which look like they're made of melted wax. Stalagmites and stalactites are everywhere, and the waist-deep water gets hotter the deeper one penetrates. Just when it's about as hot as you want it to get, the cave turns through ninety degrees, and runs parallel to the outside wall for a ways before executing another right-angle turn and heading towards the outside again. Very awesome, as were the views out over Kootenay Lake.

We cut short our conversation with the round couple from Ohio to go find a place to sleep. We drove past it, twice, then found the turnoff only to discover that since our guidebook had been published access to the site had been gated and locked. We walked down for a look at the falls anyway, and from each of the many viewpoints along the way we were really rather impressed by the scale of the falls, and the way the whitewater seemed to glow in the light of our high-powered riding lights. We didn't realise until we reached the bottom that most of the ground we'd been walking on was fairly precariously balanced atop a serious overhang above a decent drop to the rocks below. We walked back up a different path.

Camping that night ended up being a stealth mission: we snuck into the Lost Ledge Provincial Park late, set up and ate quickly and quietly, and were up early to go have breakfast in the day use area, so no BC Parks official would catch us in the campground and make us pay the $21 fee.

Getting the Reaper stuck while executing a ladylike three-point turn was NOT part of the plan.

Eventually we were free, and up the hill to the picnic area where we... wait, where's the picnic area? Oh.

Back into the campground, down to a lakeshore site with a wonderful view, where we parked in one spot and breakfasted in another before setting off back down the road towards Kaslo, home of the Sufferfest. On the way we passed the remains of a truck, which had run head-first into the cliff. We tried to figure out how he'd managed it, and when, because it wasn't there when we'd come through around nine the previous night and we didn't hear what must have been an almighty bang. There were no body parts strewn about the place, though, so we carried on our way.

Kaslo was cute, basking in the sun, as was one-time boom town Sandon, which apparently at one point had over eighty brothels operating. This in a town of 5000 people. Kind of topical, given that Canada's currently having conniptions over whether to legalise prostitution or not. From what we've heard on the radio, opinions are split on the matter, although it sounds like the factions are talking about different things: those in favor of legalising say: "What two (or more) consenting adults get up to is their business - why should paying for it be an issue?" whereas the anti-legalisation lobby says: "All prostitutes are unwilling participants - in some case slaves - who have no other option. Children are forced to be prostitutes. Native peoples are forced to be prostitutes. Drug addicts are forced to be prostitutes."
The anti-legalisation folks then throw figurative stones at the pro-legalisation folks: "He's a buyer." Actually, it's probably unfair to select that particular, particularly rabid anti-child-prostitution ex-child-prostitute as representative of the whole faction; maybe the Conservative senator from somewhere back East... no, she was an ill-informed do-gooder primarily adept at reassuring blue-rinsers that someone in the corridors of power is just as reactionary and bigoted as they are.

Listening to the debate has been by turns interesting, boring, heart-breaking, and infuriating. Eventually we turned the radio off.







* = I asked someone in Revelstoke why on earth there was a currency exchange in Nelson that was prepared to accept pesos when there was no such facility in a number of larger communities we'd passed through. Apparently it's because so much pot is grown in the area that a full-fledged currency exchange is called for: "I just happen to have a backpack full of sequentially-numbered US dollars..."