Day 1 - US

6:30 am under the cover of darkness I sneaked out of Vancouver! And as always had an interesting time at the US border trying to explain why I would want to go to SA!? Then they see all the camping equipment and really freak – ‘how do we know you will not stay on in the US?’ – Apparently every Canadian's ultimate dream is to live in the US - in a tent!

 ...they, of course, wanted to know – how I could take 2 months from work – I tried to explain that I was on a long sabbatical – to which I got a ’that must be a Canadian thing BS ’! Nothing like early morning theatrics :-)

They then searched my vehicle for firearms – ah the joy!

Just another happy day at the border resulted in me missing my tire replacement appointment giving me the opportunity to spend some time on this write-up – at Fred Myers in Bellingham. All in all – the border soap opera and tire replacement resulted in a delay of 3 hours. Thanks to an early start – should still make my destination of Seaside Oregon.

Seattle had some major road and bridge work and as a result my GPS threw a tantrum and insisted on getting me to the ferry terminal!? So after a bit of meandering and ignoring the GPS finally got back on I–5 and after almost 10 hours (not too shabby for the first day) stopped in a place called Centralia – look it up! 

Due to all the BS - did not even make it out of Washington!? On the positive side – good to get some teething trouble out of the way ;-)

Look forward to that cold beer! :-)