Leah
We’ve been too busy relaxing to post an update, so today I will try to cover yesterday’s activities as well as today’s. We were originally going to stay at Toad Rock for just two nights, but almost immediately decided that we needed as much Toad Rock time as was possible, so we talked to Mary about extending our trip to three nights instead. It worked out well for us to extend our stay. Grant and Mary are always very accommodating and are wonderful about making room for anyone. We are in a cute little cabin, there are old buses, vans, and boats that have been converted into accommodations.
Yesterday we slept in, and drank some refreshingly strong coffee in the morning. We were consistently disappointed with the American coffees we had over the last week. We ventured into Nelson and toured around the downtown area. We hit up two of the three breweries that Nelson has to offer. Torchlight was our first stop, the beers were mediocre. Backroads Brewing had (in my opinion) a much better offering of beers. It was nice that the head brewer, Mike was around so Keith was able to pick his brain plenty.
We hit a little patch of rain on our way back to the campsite, so Keith was joking that he’d had two showers that day. Then we noticed that our beer supply was lower than we had originally thought, so he went back down the road on a beer run and got his third shower of the day.
This morning there as a large group of bikers leaving Toad Rock, so we exchanged numbers with some of the group from California and wished them well on their journey. They were going into Idaho and Montana so we had plenty of ideas for roads that they needed to try.
Keith had to ride his favourite road in BC: Hwy 31A between Kaslo and New Denver, so we ventured into Kaslo for breakfast. We found a lovely bistro for breakfast and as we were exploring the area we noticed that there just so happened to be a brewery right next door. It was too early for beers, so we did our tour and made some touristy stops.
The first stop was a location that has a diversion path for a toad migration. There were tiny (dime-sized or smaller) toads (toadettes, technically) all along the edge of the lake that were making their way East. To get up the mountainside they need to get across the highways so a small wooden bridge was built under the highway bridge for the toads to get across the road safely.
Our second stop of the day was at an old mining town of Sandon. We toured a generating station that was built in the 1800’s and is still functioning to power the town.
We made a few more stops along the loop we were doing to get back to the campsite. 
One stop was for an iced coffee at a shop called “Sleep is for Sissies”. We actually went past the campsite and back into Kaslo for our mandatory stop at the brewery there. The brewery was The Angry Hen, and had some nice beers. They served snacks, but not full meals so our visit was quick. There was a very vocal little child at the brewery that motivated Keith and I to move on quicker than we normally would have. We started back down the road and stopped at J&B Pub on a Marina area of Kootenay Lake. We had fish and chips for dinner and ate with some fellow bikers from the campsite. We needed to make a final stop at the Ainsworth Hot Springs to end our day. The hot springs were so lovely; for those that have not been there the hot springs are in a natural cave. The hottest water is in the cave, just outside the cave is a cold water dunk tank / shower and there is a larger pool with warm water. The Shambala festival was just letting out the day before so there were quite a few of these creepy, giant hole in the ears, coloured hair weirdos in the hot springs. Keith figured that they only dress like that just for Shambala and kept calling them hipster d-bags! We tried to ignore the weirdos and spent plenty of time relaxing our sore muscles and left there fully relaxed.
Keith and Leah's travel on 2 wheels 