Border Mishaps

This past weekend I went on a road trip to Vancouver with my sister Kerry.  It was a ton of fun. It went really fast, though.  We left on Thursday afternoon, and didn't roll into my parents' until 3:30 in the morning!  We did sightseeing all day Friday and Saturday.  We went to Science World, the beach, over to the market on the waterfront of North Van... and lots more.  We came home on Sunday.

Perhaps my favourite part (or at least the funniest), was when we accidentally ended up on the US side of the border, without having even entered the States.  Let me explain:  my parents live on 4th Avenue.  The US/Canada border is 0 Avenue.  So they live close, and it's really close to the Peace Arch border crossing.  I wanted to take 0 Avenue home one day, to show Kerry how neat it is to drive on 0 Avenue, because just across the ditch is the States. So we headed down to the border crossing, because when I used to live down there, I remembered being able to just take a little detour down there, cross the traffic coming up from the US, and get onto 0 Avenue.  I had no idea that all this had changed.  

We kept getting closer and closer to the actual border crossing, and I kept thinking that the little road had to be there somewhere.  All of a sudden, I realized there was no road (they've done a bunch of remodeling), and we were headed into the States, with no way to get out. Well, there WAS one way - there was a one-way lane coming from the road coming up from the US.  So I figured that was my only way out, and took the one-way road the wrong way.  I thought we were in the clear. However, once I got into the traffic heading away from the States, I looked up and realized that we were on the WRONG side of the border crossing heading into Canada.  The two border stations aren't side by side - the one entering Canada is up a bit, so we ended up in the area between the two.  I started panicking, trying to think of how we would explain that we HADN'T been in the US, but took a little road the wrong way.  How stupid to think that we were entering Canada from the States, but had never actually been there... oh my.  And neither of us had passports, which, as of June 1, is a requirement for travel into and out of the US.  I took a deep breath, and as we drove up, tried to explain what had happened.  The man was stern.  And just kind of mean.  And he encountered this: "Uh, I'm so sorry sir, but we took a wrong turn and ended up here.  Uh... we didn't even go to the States... uh... I'm so sorry... I didn't mean to."  I explained about the little road I remembered from before but how it had changed.  He stared at me.  I was sure we were going to be searched and have rectal exams at any moment.  He asked for ID. We showed him our AB drivers' licenses.  I'm sure he thought, "figures".  He asked about drugs, alcohol, and firearms - none of which was in the vehicle (phew! - It's not totally out there to think that Kris may have left a rifle in our car).  He gave back our IDs and explained the correct way to get where we were going.  We were so thankful.  And then we laughed. And laughed some more.  Who knew we could go through a border crossing coming up from the States without even having been there?!  And who knew someone would actually BELIEVE us?!  I sweated a lot in those 10 minutes.  

But it was a great trip.  Lots of good memories.