Skip to content

Day-trip: Nelson to Crawford Bay area

Our neck of the woods near Nelson is a really beautiful part of British Columbia.  The roads along the lakes, valleys and over the passes are amazingly scenic.  You can drive a little slower with the windows down and really enjoy the scents and sounds of the mountains, or you can tighten your grip on the wheel and enjoy the twisty roads (safely of course!)

On this day-trip from Nelson, we head along the North Shore of the West Arm of Kootenay Lake to Balfour, where we catch the longest free ferry in BC across the lake to Kootenay Bay (this ferry, and several others, should be converted to be electric!)  From there, we hop over a small ridge to Crawford Bay, a very neat village with a dense collection of artisans.  After browsing and shopping for a few hours, we decided to head north on the east side of the lake to check out Riondel, and then south of Kootenay Bay onto Pilot Bay Peninsula to visit the restored lighthouse.  (Data about the drive from a Nissan Leaf electric vehicle point of view is at the end of this post.)Read More »Day-trip: Nelson to Crawford Bay area

Cost update – 77,777 km and 2 years

Almost 80,000 km in 2 years (I drive too much!)  The Leaf remains as perky and smooth as day 1, which is pretty amazing.

I changed the format of my cost updates somewhat and will issue them on a roughly 6 month basis going forward.  The new format of the chart should be easier to read and thus more informative.  Previous updates are linked below:

Lucky 27,777km and February 2015 Cumulative Cost Update

Cost update Feb to April 2015

50,000 km and cost update

Cost update 63,500 km, Dec 2015

Read More »Cost update – 77,777 km and 2 years

Beach bumming on an e-cargo bike

As the snow melts and the snowdrops start to bloom in Nelson, BC, my family starts to dream about all of our favourite summer activities.  We live near the shores of beautiful Kootenay Lake, so one of those activities is hanging out at the beach.

Our electrified Xtracycle Edgerunner cargo bike (aka Edgy) saw a lot of use on the weekend soccer and market runs, but it also did a bunch of trips to various beaches in the area.  The most remote was to Troop beach, which is more often accessed by boat, and is located on the south side of the west arm, on a prominent sandy point.

Read More »Beach bumming on an e-cargo bike

Day Trip: The New West EV Family goes to Whistler for the Day

Day Trip: The New West EV Family goes to Whistler for the Day!

Please be sure to read to the bottom for our Bonus Features.

Over one two three months ago, when the fall weather was still clear and dry, we decided we needed some outdoor time and out-of-the-city time.  The plan was to go to Alice Lake for a picnic lunch and a hike. We would also use the opportunity to zip up to Whistler for dinner, to get out of town, and participate in some electric vehicle (EV) tourism.

Read More »Day Trip: The New West EV Family goes to Whistler for the Day

Cost update – 63,500 km, Dec 2015

I’ve now covered over 64,000 km in our electric vehicle (EV), a 2014 Nissan Leaf.  The cover image for this blog post shows that I finally “turtled” the car (on purpose!) this month (December 2015) – another blog post in the near future will explain why I was doing this!  (Turtling the car means you go into reduced power mode and have less than 1 km to drive, the car continually limits your power to force you to pull off to the side of the road safely – this protects the battery from discharging too far.)Read More »Cost update – 63,500 km, Dec 2015