Nelson, BC - Part 1 - Crossing the Border -8/

Nelson, BC - Part 1 - Crossing the Border - 8/6/17

Situations change … and we must be flexible with our plans along the way.

We decided to not bring Bambi any further north … there is a fire incident encampment just a few miles up the road and the locals complain that the cellphone traffic from the incident camp is slowing down Internet connectivity episodically.  Frankly, I’d trade slow Internet traffic for a reduction in the fires any day … the air quality is worse … and heading further north with Bambi just feels like going into the heart of darkness …

But, we could head north with Fritz (the uncomplaining German) and visit the town of Nelson, BC … first, though, we must get across the border before the Canadians build a wall or ban Americans from heading north (after all, we must all be murderers, drug dealers and/or rapists, right?)

We hit the border early and met two Canadian Border Control Agents … it must have been a slow morning as they decided that their system identified us for a “random” search.  Gone are the days of driving across the Canadian border with just a valid driver’s license … we were prepared with our passports and Canadian money.  It turns out that one must have a valid passport to enter Canada because the US requires a valid passport to enter the USA … Canada cannot accept anyone in its country that cannot get back into their country of origin (I thought that Canada had initiated the change …).

The first question that the Border Control Agent had for us was “What brings you to Canada?”  When we responded that we wanted to escape the heat of Arizona, he asked “And how is that working for you?”  He went on to describe the 101 degree temperatures from last week … perhaps he only says that to Americans to discourage them from heading to Canada.  The agent then conducted a search of Fritz and had a hard time believing that a couple from Arizona was not carrying weapons … after all, we’re from Arizona, land of everyone packing a gun.  Our agent had family near Scottsdale and he had visited and knew that everyone in Arizona walked around with a gun on their hip. We claimed Tucson as our home and that it is a small island of sanity in the midst of the Republican Red Sea of Arizona.  He looked a bit dubious …

Our only weapon was bear spray for hiking, which, of course, he wanted to see.  He was a bit dismayed to see that we still had the safety catch on our bear spray cans and solemnly advised us that we should cut off the safety catch before hiking (I think that we got credibility points for having the bear spray for hiking and lost our points by still having the safety catch attached … we win some, we lose some).

After having all of the dark windows on Fritz lowered (sunscreen on windows is not popular this far north) and having us remove our sunglasses (the sunglasses were necessary because of the light diffusion glare from the smoke hazed skies), he wanted to know if we were carrying wads of cash in excess of $10,000 … I decided not to joke that we wished that we had that problem.

Off we went to Nelson …