Nelson, British Columbia

We put the Kodiak up for sale on Facebook Marketplace and scheduled the requesite appointments for inspection and maintenance in Kelowna before heading southward from Nakusp to Nelson. (The initial response was quite positive among prospective buyers. It seemed likely we wouldn't have trouble finding someone to adopt our beloved vehicle. If anything, our asking price, the same as what we purchased it for, may have been too low).

Regardless, we had some time before our appointments, so we intended to take a little time to see more of the area first. We stopped at Silverton, New Denver and Slocan on the road to Nelson. The first two seemed like prosperous little communities, while the third was little, but clearly not very prosperous.

They were all located at various points along the Slocan Lake, which was quite a sight in its own right. On the other side of the lake was Valhalla Provincial Park, probably the coolest name for a park in the entire country. These tiny communities all took advantage of the name, with the likes of Odin's Tavern in New Denver winning the race to the top.

The lake was pristine, according to Kenting.

Silverton had a nice campground right on the water that we would've stayed at if we weren't looking to make a little more headway with appointments coming up in a week.

It also had an outstanding little cafe. The desserts there were divine--worthy of the gods, you might say.

Slocan had a neat little hotel near the water, but the rest of the town was looking rough. Apparently they've been digging out of a hole left by a dead mill for a while now.

They'll always have the lake to turn to though, at least.

We had a bit of a walk in each town, a snack in the Silverton cafe, and then drove on to Nelson, which was the biggest town we'd been to in a while, and by a fair bit. 

The campground was located in the middle of town, not far from downtown one way and lakefront the other. We set up camp, got the Kodiak leveled and hooked up to electricity and water as per usual, and took a break.

The first evening we elected to check out the waterfront instead of downtown.

My wife and I agreed that, based on our initial impressions, we wouldn't be overly devastated if someone put a gun to our head and told us we had to spend a couple years in Nelson.

We returned to the campsite by sundown.

Day 2 featured our first showing of the Kodiak to a prospective buyer. I really liked these people and they seemed to really like the vehicle. However, both parties agreed that it made sense to wait for the results of the inspection the following week before discussing an offer.

We finished the afternoon by heading downtown.

My agenda included checking out Nelson Brewery. I enjoyed a couple of their beers earlier in Nakusp and wanted to see what else they had to offer.

It turns out that despite being the oldest brewery in town and in business since 1991, they still lacked a license to serve full-sized pints for consumption at the bar. They had been waiting for 3 years to receive one and were forced in the meantime to serve 4 sample-sized glasses instead to make up for it. 

This was perhaps the most ridiculous example of BC government regulations yet (though the requirement to have our vehicle registration officially translated from French to English since it was from Quebec was right up there too). I was beginning to fear the BC government. How might these insane people draw out the sale of our vehicle?

I put my worries aside briefly and enjoyed some beer samples, ultimately concluding that Nelson Brewery was among the best craft beer makers I tried in the country.

I bought quite a few cans, and we returned to our trusty Kodiak.

It was later that evening that we got a compelling offer from someone in Alberta. They would buy the Kodiak outright prior to the Out of Province Inspection and have it registered themselves if we were willing to drive it to them in Calgary. This, it turns out, is something only possible in Alberta (as opposed to in BC, where the inspection must be passed first before the sale). On top of the lack of sales tax to deal with in Alberta, this was a tempting and extremely timely offer considering we were planning on heading 4-hours west to Kelowna for a showing with a very aggressive suitor scheduled to arrive from Vancouver just to see our wheeled bear.

Maybe it was the beers, or the growing sense that the BC government was insane--or both--but we were very intrigued by this offer. Afterall, the Out of Province Inspection was said to be quite onerous--the vehicle had to be perfect to pass, and a reinspection was required at the very end after any necessary fixes were made. We had just driven almost the entire country in the Kodiak and were confident it was safe and capable of many more years of service. We knew it had a lot of life left, but were uncertain how long it would take to jump through all the regulatory hoops needed to sell the rig. The cold weather was coming and the days were getting shorter, and many campsites were closing up shop for the season as a result...

All of these considerations factored into our thinking, and we were convinced to completely overturn our plans once the man on the phone agreed to pay a deposit and an extra $1000 on the sale.

With the deposit secured, the next morning we canceled all our plans for Kelowna, mapped out the final leg of our journey--back to Alberta instead of all the way to the west coast--and booked our flights from Calgary to Vancouver and Vancouver to Seoul. 

I knew the journey was coming to an end, but never saw it happening in that fashion, or that quickly.

After a flurry of morning activity, we drove on from Nelson toward Alberta, taking the southern route this time. We had visions of a short detour and checking out Waterton National Park near the US border on the way to Calgary... 

... But everyone has a plan until they get a blown tire in an area with no cell phone service.