Who Knew There Were Caribou?

Who knew there were caribou this far south?

On our way to Banff we drove through the mountains between Salmo and Creston, and at the top of the mountain pass we briefly entered caribou territory. We didn't see a caribou, but we did see a yellow sign with a silhouette of a caribou reminding us not to run over a caribou.

Grizzly in My Parking Spot

The wife was swimming at the Nelson Community Center one evening. When she came home there was a grizzly standing in the spot where we park the car. It was mightily startled by the headlights and ran up the road, back to the forest.

We decided rather than stay in a hotel, we would rent a house in an area of Nelson called Mountain Station. It is a beautifully renovated 100 year old farmhouse on a half acre of land high above the City. The view from the kitchen window is spectacular and there are fantastic walking and biking trails right out the front door. Although there are a few houses above ours, there isn't much between here and the Selkirk Mountains, and we had heard on the radio earlier in the week about a grizzly sighted in our area.

When she finally got up enough courage to come inside after scaring away the great silver-tipped bear, the wife somewhat testily asked me if I received her text message. I guess she didn't want to phone and wake the baby, and apparently I was supposed to rush out there to rescue her, but I hadn't noticed the text which simply stated "Grizzly".

Placenta Descenta

Days off in Nelson are for mountain biking, and Nelson delivers with more than 80 trails including Placenta Descenta.


Nothing like ripping down a steep, jagged rock-strewn trail through a bear infested forest to help one forget how many times Van-Kam Freightways has screwed up a simple materials delivery.

Nelson

Nelson B.C. has somehow packed in all the good things you might find in the downtown core of a large city yet still kept the feel of a small town. How are they able to sustain 4 or 5 high-end restaurants, independent coffee shops, and organic bakeries & grocers in a town with a population of about 10,000 with no major industry? They even have their own police force.

Two answers to the question come to mind. The first is City council fights tooth and nail to keep franchise restaurants out of Nelson, which gives the independent shops an advantage over the Burger Kings, Tim Hortons, and McDonald’s, none of which are in Nelson. A few unfortunate slip ups have occurred; the Subway, A&W and Starbucks (you can’t stop the evil empire), but for the most part Nelson is refreshingly original. The second is the people of Nelson have money, and it isn’t from working in a mine or cutting down a forest, it’s from growing marijuana.

All of a sudden the Nelson Police Force makes sense. A town that thrives on the profits of the Devil’s Lettuce, and collects taxes from the influx of money generated by growers of the Giggle Bush, and furtherly uses that tax money to pay civil servants, has a police force that is technically being paid by Jungle Juice. To me, a guy who does not partake in the Mary Potter but is otherwise not opposed to it, this is sheer genius. Stage a few phony busts to make the squares think the fuzz are on their game and otherwise leave the urban farmers and the City of Nelson to prosper.

Apparently, Nelson was one of the few places in North American that wasn't hit at all by the economic disaster that crippled the U.S. I guess even when people are short on green, they still buy Green.

So was Nancy Reagan wrong when she told us to “just say no”? I think the people of Nelson might just say yes.

Slag Pile

When the baby decides it is time to stop, it is time to stop.

That is exactly how we ended up having lunch in Greenwood BC, a town that I have always called “Slag Pile” because of the gigantic pile of slag that dominates the view as you enter B.C.'s smallest city. We have blasted through Slag Pile many times on our way to other destinations, but we have never stopped. This time the baby decided it was time to stop in Slag Pile, and stop we did.

Forgetting for a moment the pile of slag, which is a relic of an old copper mine, Greenwood is actually a very quaint little town. The buildings downtown have existed since the town boomed and are reminiscent an old western; a colourful and cheery facade masking a melancholy emptiness. We had lunch at the Pacific Grill, which I was surprised to find a clean, well-decorated establishment. We were promptly seated, provided with a nice high chair for the baby, and served an excellent lunch. I had a homemade burger that was pretty damn good, and the baby really enjoyed the ceiling fans.

As we were leaving town it occurred to me that Greenwood is like a living ghost town, and at that very moment I thought I saw Lee Van Cleef shooting apples out of a tree for a local Italian Mexican boy, but I guess it was just a trick of the slag.