Blog entries

Tuesday, June 19th

Today we drove into Canada.  Although it is a different country, the people here speak English just like to we at home.  Grandpop lead the caravan so we had to get up at 6 o'clock in the morning to get out early.  We now are so far north that we are on a different time zone.  When it is 3 o'clock at home, it is 4 o'clock here.  This campground has internet at the office, so I am able to send this  post.  When we got to the campground I saw a Canadian coin on the ground and picked it up.  I just looked at now (5 hours later) - it is a $2 coin.  WHOOHOO!  They do not have one dollar paper money - they use one and two dollar coins instead.  They call the one dollar coin the "Looney" and the two dollar coin is called a "Tooney"!

This for the adults following the blog: 

We had an exciting crossing into Canada.  We were the lead car of the caravan.  The border guard asked if we had any alcohol, plants that were not food or firearms.  We replied yes to a half a box of wine and negative to all the rest.  I guess we looked like alcoholics as they had us pull over.  A nice female guard came back to our rig to check it out.  We showed  her our half a box of wine.  That was fine.  She then started looking in ALL cabinets and storage spaces.  When she got to the pantry she found a bottle of bourbon I keep to cook fresh salmon in.  It is not something we drink and so we forgot all about it.  We also forgot about the bottle of rum for my rum cake.  Unfortunately I had grabbed a bottle of Bailey's from the basement that I had totally forgot about also (HONESTLY!!!!!).  Once she saw that, she  wanted to go through the rig with a fine tooth  comb and we had to put out the slides and open all the outside compartments.  In the compartment we had some fire wood - something else that is a no-no.  We bought the wood in Canada (it is so marked) on our last trip and it was kiln dried and certified bug free.  So she said that was ok as long as she didn't find anything else.  Then she got to the car and found my potted herbs.  I explained that the guard said that plants for food was ok.  She said no, we misunderstood somehow because they could not allow the dirt in.  So no potted plants are allowed, food or not.

We spent at least an hour there.  They took our bourbon and rum, our herbs and firewood.  Pleasantly though.  I was also relieved that we did not have to pay any fine.  The bad part is that we held up the most important part of the caravan as it was our job to arrive early and get everything ready for the rest of the group. (not to mention the three rigs traveling with us had to wait at the border for us!) So we felt a little like dirt bags.  Also felt bad that the guards probably thought we were lying through our teeth and trying to sneak the stuff in.  It is kind of funny as we took out all the wine and beer we usually carry as we knew what the limit is!   Darn my short term memory!!!!  LOL