Saturday 8th April – Arrival in Canada

It’s hard to believe but today is the last day of our six-month stint in the USA.  Our visas expire at midnight, so I guess the priority for the day should be to leave the country? But where has the time gone?!

An 8am alarm gave us all time to pack up and we showed the Baileys the basics of un-hooking the RV for the first time and making ourselves ‘road-ready’.  We left our spot at 10am, got a propane fill on the site and hit the road.

It sounds ridiculous, but we were feeling grateful to have passengers on board with their own ideas of what to see and places they want to go.  It saves us having to make decisions for a couple of weeks.  How lazy is that?! But after six months of making decisions daily on whether to stay put or move, which direction to drive in for how long and where to stop for the night it feels like a nice break.

 

So, today, we were heading towards a location that Stu had learnt about on a documentary he had seen about a tragic avalanche in 1910. It was on hour and 40 minutes on Route 2 east towards Wenatchee with the aim of reaching a town that used to be called Wellington before changing its name to Tye to try and avoid the negative link to the tragedy.  A group of train passengers had to stop at this location due to extreme weather but were killed when the avalanche swamped the building where they were seeking shelter.  As we climbed to ever-increasing elevations it became clear that the weather was going to hamper us again today. This is what the road looked like where we wanted to go:

Stu did not want to fail in his quest so we all got kitted out in our best cold-weather gear and put our best feet forward, only to be met with a wall of snow  (right).  The walk disintegrated into a snowball fight and we had to return to the RV.

We headed back towards Seattle but there was no denying that there was some awesome scenery on the route:

We briefly stopped at Deception falls (below) before having lunch and heading for the border.   

Stu and Jo keeping warm in the wilderness

 

 

Nearing the border we were warned

that there was a 15-minute queue which we didn’t think was too bad at all.  The border guard couldn't seem to understand why we wanted to come into Canada. We had a conversation for a few minutes, general chat about where we were heading and why, but he clearly didn’t feel the need to search the RV as then we were through, into Canada for the first time!

It was only 20 minutes further to Tsawassen where we had reserved a place at a camp site only two minutes down the road from the ferry terminal we needed in the morning.  It was past 8pm by the time we arrived and hooked up. So we made a speedy dinner of bacon and egg cups with chips and all played some cards before bed.