2007-08-07
More traveling… this time internationally! This was the first time the kids had been technically outside of the US (unless you count Christian’s in utero trip to Sweden), and the first trip to Canada for any of us.
We were fortunate to run into a helpful guy at a gas station in Washington who clued us in on directions to a border crossing that was a bit smaller and out of the way but would have much less waiting (than the main one you go through taking the I-5 north), and it turned out he was right. We drove through the countryside and ended up at a very small station, with no cars waiting in line. There was no trouble at all going through (despite our lack of passports - Martha’s and mine had expired and the kids never had them), just answering a series of questions that I believe were more about how you answered than the answers themselves, and we were on our way.
We did get a bit off track on the other side of the border, driving through a similar countryside environment rather than the main highway route, but we eventually made our way to our hotel in Vancouver. This time, I squeezed into the parking structure rather than dismounting everything beforehand, and ended up scraping the roof on several occasions, but no damage was done.
We walked and took the train down to the waterfront area, which was really cool, and went to a nice Italian place for dinner. The train was kind of like a smaller, cleaner version of the NYC subway system. In the evening, after we returned to the hotel, I ran down to the Starbucks across the street to do some last minute stuff for the JustOne site, taking advantage of the internet access and the briefest of moments in which to make use of it, since it was likely to be the last time I’d have both together (access + free time) for the rest of the trip. [This turned out to be a correct assumption]