We just had a short weekend away in the Kootenay Lake area of British Columbia – it’s a very nice part of the country, and we were staying with some friends who have a house there. It’s about a 6 hour drive from Calgary, making it just beyond what most people would consider an easy commute for a cottage, so it isn’t quite so heavily built up as some vacation areas and this seems to suit the local folks just fine.
Since we were not too far from Nakusp, we travelled up there for a day to stop in at Wolfgang’s Laverda shop which is nestled away in the hills above Nakusp. It seems like an unlikely location for what is probably North America’s largest supplier of vintage Laverda motorcycle parts and services, but obviously it must work. Wolfgang also stocks parts suitable for other makes and models., and I particularly was interested in picking up a pair or two of the Ikon rear shock absorbers he sells which are made in Australia, very good quality and more importantly are the correct length to fit my GT750’s. We had a good look around his shop and warehouse, sorted out the parts and then had a very nice drive back down to where we staying. The next day we stopped in at Crawford Bay to see the North Woven Broom company. Again, it seems an unlikely place to find something like this, but North Woven Broom has supplied brooms as props for movies and television shows like Bewitched, Road to Avonlea and Shanghai Noon as well as for the Canadian distributor of the Harry Potter books ! Needless to say, we bought a broom for ourselves and it is currently looking very nice in our front hallway !
As I’ve written previously, we generally look for Shell stations as we travel as they are the folks paying my pension, but they sure don’t make it easy. On the way home, it was disappointing to note that we were able to drive 942 km (585 miles) without seeing a single Shell service station the whole time ! Weird.