John tries to cross the Canadian border with an expired US passport. (He conveniently left his recently renewed passport at home.) Obviously they let him into Canada or you wouldn't see that picture of him with a big grin on his face by a lake just off BC Rte 31A (upper right corner of this page). The rest of the trip he'd wonder if the US Border Patrol would let him back into the States. They did, and with that went his only hope of ever having a good, affordable health insurance policy.

Why the Kootenays?

I had never even heard of the Kootenays until just last year when I casually asked my friends Ron and Meredith for bike trip suggestions. They had lived in the Kootenays during the 1960's and had written two books about the area - a pictorial history and a contemporary travel guide - and they really piqued my interest. By the time we arrived in Nelson in September to start our cycling trip I had read both books cover to cover and was pretty psyched about all we'd be seeing.

Some Background

With a reasonably mild climate, forested mountains, lakes, and rivers the Kootenays in southeast British Columbia have been home to indigenous people for thousands of years. In the 1800s European immigrants began their exploration and exploitation of western North America. At first it was mostly fur trappers but later there were discoveries of gold, silver, and lead which brought successive waves of immigrants, creating boom towns for short periods of time. Other immigrants sought more lasting ways of life, homesteading and planting fruit orchards. Concurrent with all of this were attempts to build a transportation infrastructure that included hundreds of paddlewheel steamers on the long narrow lakes that run north and south, imported labor to build wagon roads and then rail lines through rather difficult mountainous terrain.

Most of this history is a distant memory now but what remains is pretty amazing. The boom towns have shrunk and while fruit orchards and lead mines still exist the economy seems to rely more on outdoor adventure tourism like skiing, mountain biking, fishing and boating. But some of the history is preserved in small museums, restored buildings and ghost towns. All this combined with the unspoiled natural beauty of the Kootenays makes it a great place to travel by bike or other means.

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