Two major U.S. newspapers are singing the praises of Nelson and Kootenay Lake.
The Washington Post included a piece by John Briley on June 20 headlined “Better than Banff? In British Columbia, Nelson is a contender.”
After examining Banff’s virtues, Briley posed the question: “So: How about a similar checklist — hiking, paddling, skiing and grinning ever-so-smugly — in a slightly larger, more affordable and far less-trafficked locale?”
The story went on to extoll our “world-class trails,” and called Kootenay Lake “a 65-mile-long sanctuary for stand-up paddleboarders, canoeists, sailors, anglers, powerboaters and swimmers.”
It also claimed Nelson’s “80 restaurants are more per capita than Washington, D.C. or New York,” singling out Kootenay Tamil Kitchen and Jackson’s Hole. (There must have been some rounding involved, for TripAdvisor lists 68 places to eat in Nelson, some of which are no longer in business.)
On Sunday, the Spokane Spokesman-Review included Kootenay Lake on a roundup of favourite summer day trips. Oddly, it started off by claiming the lake was “formed by the damming of the Kootenay River.” (The dams do affect lake levels, but the lake was there long before they were built.)
The rest of the piece was more accurate. It gave shoutouts to Kokanee Creek Provincial Park, the Kootenay Lake ferry, Glass House in Boswell, the fruit stands of Creston, and Crawford Bay’s “charming restaurants and public beach.”