Then we were back on the road – Oh Canada, oh Canada! It didn’t take us as long as I thought it would to get to the border. We did decide not to follow the iPod’s map instructions and we went a shorter way north, which meant we went over a long stretch of gravel road. Luckily we avoided the crazy roadworks we’d encountered yesterday! We didn’t see very many cars on this road and the ones we did see waved. The real North Dakotan countryside!
We stopped at the border into Canada and showed them all our paperwork. We didn’t bother activating our Candian work visas, as this trip is still counted in our USA VWP 90 days. It was all looking good and then they wanted to search our car. Which was fine, but they basically pulled poor Betsey apart. At least the bed at the back and they opened all the bags and looked under the seats in the back and everywhere. They found a bottle of ‘rye’ to which I may have said a little rudely ‘a what?’ Apparently that’s what they call whiskey. And I’d forgotten that Will had bought a bottle of Canadian Club at Applejack’s in Colorado many weeks ago. If I’d known, we’d have drunk it. As it was we had too much alcohol – they taxed us for the wine and beers we had which was nice considering we also had another 4 or 5 bottles of spirits. Ooops. I kicked myself for not thinking to look this up! Anyway, Will’s bottle of rye was confiscated and he had to sign a paper saying he’d watched it being tipped out because he didn’t want to pay the $38 import tax. Duh – it’s made in Canada, that’s why it’s called…nevermind. The import tax would have brought it up to Aussie prices – and it was a 1.75 litre bottle. It felt like sacrilege. I was so angry at Will for not paying attention to his booze collection and wasting that money! Lucky it only cost about $20 or so. Still, it will be a long time before I buy Will any CC. Finally we were allowed to put Betsey back together again. What were they looking for? People? Drugs? If it was the latter, they didn’t check the water storage section or black and grey water receptacles, so just a tip haha. Anyway, in some ways they were really thorough and in others they were more blasé. They even wanted to check the folder with our passports in it, even though we’d just had it inside. All done in disposable gloves – no traces of their prying fingertips haha. Then we were allowed to go and we were in Saskatchewan, Canada. The scenery looked just like North Dakota haha.
We stopped to get cash in Estevan, but the first ATM we went to wasn’t working so we went to a bank instead. Will’s normal Commonwealth Card didn’t work (not sure if it is programed to work internationally), but luckily mine did and it still had money in the account, otherwise we would’ve been dollar-less! Then it was time to find somewhere to camp for night. A few of the campgrounds we found were closed due to flooding. Eventually we found one in the town of Weyburn. There were sooo many bugs – it was wretched. We stayed in Betsey with the a/c on, hiding from the bugs! We were pretty tired so after dinner we went straight to bed!
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