er on the dash to remind us; b) Renewed our passports; c) Updated Spot’s shots and papers; d) limited the amount of alcohol on board (darn!); e) limited fruits and vegetables in the fridge (i.e. no lemons for vodka tonics--darn again!) We will have to shift our brains to Canadian lingo—kilometers, kilograms, loonies, toonies.As we approached the border crossing, we sat upright in our seats, smiling, with the papers in hand and ready. The border patrol officer was very cordial, and went through the standard questions…Tobacco? – NO; Alcohol? – Yes, within the limits; Firearms? – NO; Pepper spray????? Hmmm….Well, we do have some bear spray on board from our Alaska trip, and then realized we also had a small canister of pepper spray from our Alaska trip. OMG--Pepper spray is illegal in Canada! OOOOPS…no more smiling…big red flag…big red faces! We were flagged over to a special retaining area, and two officers came to the door to retrieve our pepper spray. Jim had to go to the “office” to sign a paper of abandonment to forfeit the pepper spray. How embarrassing! The border patrol guards explained that if we had not declared the spray and it was discovered, we would have been fined, and they would have seized the RV. They never asked about Spot or his papers, and never asked about lemons. Whew…what an entry into Canada. We made it through, less our abandoned canister of pepper spray.
After the border crossing, we had just a short distance to travel to get to the campground, but as we went along and noticed bridges ahead with weight limits, we realized we had not converted the RV weight to a metric measure. Ooops again! We finally arrived at 1000 Islands KOA campground in Landsdowne, Ontario, without falling through a bridge, thank goodness. One of the first things we did after arriving was convert the RV weight: 33,000 lbs = 14,968kg.
We’ll have a good dinner, get a good night’s sleep and head for Montreal tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment