One Night StandJun 10, 2010
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This morning left us with 2 major chores before we could leave Vancouver. The most important of course was to pick up Suzie. When we got to the day care center, she had not come in yet as her caretaker was sick. So we headed back to the car and picked her up directly from Lawrin who had cared for her in the evenings. Before putting her in the car we thought we would walk her around a little, and when we walked past the house where she had stayed she was sure that was where she wanted to go. We had to convince her to get in the car - guess she really liked her new friends.
Our 2nd chore was to find out if the mail we had had forwarded from Florida to Vancouver had arrived. I told the mail forwarding service to send it whatever way they wanted, as long as it would assure that it got there by June 8th as we were leaving on the 9th. Well it did not arrive, so we told them to just return it to sender and when it gets back to Florida we will have it sent again - once we figure out where we will be then. Hopefully no one has sent us a million dollars with a cancellation date on the check.
We got to the border and stopped at the duty free shop for some vodka as it is very expensive in Washington. When we got back onto the road through customs, we got in the line that said Nexus which we thought was the name of the store; it was not the name of the store, it was the line for people with a pre-approved customs card because of their frequent crossings. The inspector was not friendly and informed us that the fine for getting into that line without a card is $5000 per person. He took our passports and wanted to know the last time we had driven across the border. While we have been in Canada before, we always flew so I told him it was at least 10 years (In truth, it was 40 years as we went there by car on our honeymoon in 1970). He very sternly reprimanded us, made us hang our heads in shame and stupidity, but let us go. Our mistake probably saved us about 45 minutes in line, but I don't think we will try it again. Definitely not with that customs agent.
We picked up Louie from Campers World where it was being serviced and headed EAST. We had really been wanting to head in that direction for a while, so it felt good to get on the road. We made it well into the Cascades and camped for the night in the National Park with no services. Our generator worked fine and we had driven pretty far so were ready for an early night and an early start the next day. Go East Old Man (and Woman)!
