Day nineteen, July 27, 2011
Although we had a wonderful night and truly enjoyed Marshall's company, we do not know if Portland was more than a one night stop! Before getting on the road Marshall insisted that we get breakfast at a place called the Tin Shed. It is one of his favorites and assured us that we would not be disappointed. The previous night he was on top of his game with both the grilled cheese cart and then again with the Poutine so of course we took his word for it. Once again Portland did impress us with their fancy version of eggs accompanied with cheesy grits and a biscuit. After breakfast we said our goodbyes and were off to Canada.
As I was driving, Rob decided to google things that were and were not allowed to be brought into Canada, even though at this point if it was in our car it pretty much had to enter Canada with us! (I guess better late than never though!) Rob informed me that our car should get through with no problems. Our only issues, alcohol and weapons! I mean really how could anyone visit wine country and not want to take a little (10 bottles) home with them?!?!? So for the next couple of minutes we discussed whether border patrol (if they found our stash) would consider our purchases in wine country an "excessive amount" of liquor. Then it hit us - our weapon drawer! Since we are doing some camping and were not sure what wildlife we may encounter, we wanted to be prepared (oh and also for when we drove through certain southern states). Now I began to slightly panic but because we still had so much camping ahead of us, I was also not ready to discard these crucial self defense tools. So we decided to take a chance.
As we approached the boarder patrolman, I handed Rob the passports and took a deep breath. Jeffrey was a rather large man and began with a series of serious questions. Where are you coming from? How long ago did you leave for this trip? What brings you to Canada? How long will you be staying here? Suddenly his mood changed. He not only recognized but was also intrigued by the international symbol on our passport covers - the New York Yankees sign!! He asked us a couple of questions about the Yankees and MLB and we were off. We never existed the car, popped the trunk, or even opened the bubble!
Now the major challenge! Navigating Canada with no cell phones or GPS. Good thing Rob was once again thinking ahead and wrote down directions from the boarder to our hotel. So other than sitting in traffic and trying to convert all the metric units we were seeing into US Customary, it was smooth sailing.
We checked into our hotel but for some reason could not get our computers to connect to the Internet. It was still pretty early and since our stay in Vancouver will be shortly livec we decided to head right out to visit Downtown. This time we had no directions and really had no destination - totally winging it! On our way to the car we figured we would first ask our front desk employee, who we assumed would be friendly and helpful just like most we have encountered (recall Susan from Las Vegas who led us to Cappos the delicious, entertaining speak easy restaurant). Boy were we wrong, our AI friend was a far call from helpful. He told Rob that in order to get downtown "you can drive through town or get on a highway" and was unsure how long it would us to get there. We took a chance and figured our instincts would be better than anything he could offer us. After all how hard could it be, we will just head toward the huge skyscrapers Once again we were wrong, after asking a few people for directions (none being very helpful), several U-turns, a few choice words, our 20 mile drive took us a little over an hour. I was really beginning to miss Matilda (my GPS) and began to think we would have to eat at Church's Chicken next to our hotel.
We finally found our way and choose Stanley Park as our first stop. Here our photographer captured some beautiful scenic shots. The city of Vancouver is so pretty, it sits on the bay and behind the water are beautiful snow topped mountains. We arrived to a great photo spot just in time to see the sun set behind the mountains. After walking around and taking in the landscape we called it a night and headed back to the room. Hopefully to tomorrow Canada will bring us better luck. Peace, love, and happiness, the Nomads!
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