Information Echo

It was Saturday morning, and it was time to pack-up and leave Vancouver. We had a great time, but unfortunately ran out of time to do all the things we really wanted to do - a whale watching adventure, a trip to Gastown, a ferry trip to Victoria and a few other excursions that we had hoped to accomplish simply didn’t happen.

The hot weather had arrived - we switched on the AC for the first time since the trip began and stayed cool while we packed up. Still beautifully sunny, the hot weather coupled with the humidity actually made it a bit uncomfortable, but we weren’t about to complain, although I was now glad that we had fixed the charging system on the truck as it meant that we could actually use the AC, rather then trying to conserve power to make it into the USA.

Our trip towards the border crossing at Washington state was only about 50 kilometers, of about a 45 minute drive through downtown and south towards the border. The trip went well until we reached the border and then came to a grinding halt about 2 kilometers from the border.

Listening to the radio it seems that the expected wait was about 3 hours. Crap. Perhaps we should have considered the fact that this was the Canada Day weekend and plenty of Canadians were headed south. Coupled with some grumblings we heard while waiting in line that there was some sort of border guard protest happening on the US side that was causing the delays to begin with, the wait seemed like it would really screw up our day.

And it was a long wait - for the first hour we moved no more then a few hundred feet. Others were growing frustrated and were shutting their vehicles off and walking ahead to see what the problem was. We took turns driving (a few feet at a time) and the other person would hop into the trailer and use the bathroom as necessary, etc.

At about the 1.5 hour point Christie ran back to the trailer and fixed us lunch which was actually quite enjoyable. Others in the line went hungry, or took the trek to the duty-free shop and payed massively inflated prices for mediocre food at the small cafe inside the store.

Once we actually arrived at the booths (in excess of three hours later) we found out why the delay was occuring - they were spending at least 3 to 5 minutes per vehicle - some sort of protest indeed I would guess. When we pulled up ourselves we got the fuzzy-eyeball on why we were crossing the border so far from home (apparently RV’ers don’t travel anymore?) and then the guard seemed to think that my truck had just been recently painted. Now, I can understand why this would cause concern (stolen vehicles routinely get repainted) but if anyone cares to look closely you can quickly find plenty of indications that despite being clean (I had just washed the truck in Vancouver before departing) it was anything but fresh paint.

I answered all the questions, was patient as he did everything short of crawl around underneath (He was curious why it was so “wet looking” underneath? My rust prevention spray I would guess?) and finally waved us through. Four hours after we left Vancouver, we were finally on the interstate.

This seriously screwed up our plans to be into the campground early in the afternoon - with about 400 Kilometers still ahead of us, allowing for a few rest and fuel stops, as well as the grades ahead, it was looking like we wouldn’t arrived until around 8:30 to 9:00 PM now. Ugh.

The drive went well despite one large grade that gave Rogers Pass in Alberta a run for it’s money - the weather was hot and sticky all day and the truck spiked a temperature that I had never seen before. Rather unsettling, but the truck seemed to handle it in stride.

We pulled into the State Park we had hoped to camp at (Petrified Forest state park in Vantage Washington) only to find it was full to capacity. (sigh) The park ranger came out and spoke to us - I tried to see if there was an overflow area that we could set up in for the night (since we were only here for a single night) but there was nothing available. He did however tell us about a scenic lookout a few miles up the road that might be a good area to boondock for the night, so with little other option at this point we set out down the interstate again.

Sure enough we found the lookout, and at 10PM with all of us tired, it looked pretty good to us - there was no signs that prevented overnight camping, and not a sole up there, so we setup camp for the night. I started up the generator to run the AC and we simply left it on all night long to stay comfortable. We watched a bit of a movie with the kids, and then quickly running out of steam, we crashed for the night at about 11PM.

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