Great Falls (36) to Lethbridge (38), Canada

Luckily, the excessive fruit and veggies amounted to nothing, well almost nothing if you don’t count the farting!

The road north on the I15 was great, a separated 2 lane highway right to the USA/Canadian border. Passing through the border was to be our next hurdle. A small queue of vehicles was lined up in the only open “tourist” lane (there were also commercial vehicle lanes and booths) and although the lane moved quite slowly, we arrived at the booth in about 10 minutes.

The officer didn’t want to see our passports but asked us the standard, obligatory questions, where are you going?, where have you been?, how long will you be here?, etc and waived us through to a parking point on the Canadian side of the border where we felt sure that’s where we’d have a vehicle inspection.

We read a sign that required the family to all exit the rig with our passports and enter a cross-border building for Passport Control. Once inside, there was only 1 person in front of us in the queue, a Mexican guy who appeared to be getting some heavy questioning. Having been asked to take a seat and wait, I thought we may also be in line for a serious questioning.

The Mexican chap was asked to take a seat after we’d been there about 5 minutes and then we were ushered up as a family. The questions asked of us were quite direct but light-hearted and then the girls were asked to leave us, take a seat and let Mum and Dad be questioned alone.

He was very polite and the questions all related to whether or not we had any criminal record, been arrested, in trouble with the law, how much cash were we carrying, etc. Then the girls were invited back, passports were stamped and he fossicked about in a draw and found some Canadian flags and stickers for the girls. We all left, smiling and happy in stark contrast to the Mexican guy who was being ushered back for further grilling.

Once back in the rig, I wondered where and when we would be asked about our fruit and veggies. Away we went, onward towards Lethbridge without once being questioned! Great to have had the feast, but it makes us wonder what we should do during the border crossing going back into the USA? Take little is the answer I suppose, just in case we need to ditch the lot.

Shortly north of the border we came to a Travel Information and Interpretive Centre and stopped there for lunch. They gave us quite a few brochures of what to see in Alberta, the nearest being about a 45 minute drive (each way) east from where we were, a place called “Writing-on-Stone”.

As Lethbridge wasn’t too far away, we decided to drive there to have a look – that’s our next blog.