Day 32 (5/2)
Remember that firewood . . .
Rather than take another hour long tour of Vancouver’s outlying neighborhoods by following 99 all the way back to I-5 at the boarder, we detoured on to Highway 1 to save time and aggravation. I had lain awake the night before worrying about dealing with boarder guards over out lack of passports and when we got to the kiosk, we were directed to park over there and go into that building over in that direction. The guy who interviewed us to establish our citizenship was so laid back he asked if he could call Connie Connie instead of Constance.
We breezed through that and were sent to the agriculture counter. There we met the Nurse Ratchet of boarder patrol petty bureaucrats. Humor, empathy and kindness were dirt she wiped off the soles of her shoes at night. Yes, we did have 4 oranges, some carrots and lettuce, all of which we had purchased in the good ol’ US of A. She would have to inspect the van. I had to go out and lower the bike rack in order to open the back doors. Then we were told to go sit on that bench over there. When she came back, she had the oranges (the carrots and lettuce apparently don’t constitute a threat of any kind). Ok, cool. So we are free to go, huh? No! The fucking firewood. We’d bought it in Gallup, NM, hauled it around over 4000 miles through 6 states and Canada but couldn’t bring it back across the boarder. YOU MUST RETURN TO CANADA! But what can we do with it? Not my problem. Fortunately, a couple of helpful officers working outside told us of a RV camp that would take it back up the road a few miles and soon we were back at and able to cross the boarder only an hour and a half after we had originally arrived at it.
Our target was Edmonds, a suburb north of Seattle where Connie’s best friend since 7th grade used to live. Several times we brought the kids up to visit for vacations and we stopped for a while on our trip in ’85. Following her job as editor of The Milepost (the ultimate travel guide for Alaska), she moved to Anchorage about 15 years ago. We had decided to stay there for old times sake and picked a motel down by the waterfront. We walked along the waterfront to the ferry terminal, reminiscing about old times and being awed by sunset over the snow capped peaks of the Olympics across the sound. Then we walked into town a little and ate dinner.
In the morning we walked again to the ferry terminal and bought round trip tickets. We didn’t have time to do more than ride across to Kingston and back, but being on the water is better than being next to it and the views are so beautiful.