Saturday, May 3rd, 2014

Sooo, I crossed the border yesterday - what a hassle! Last year, I had made a list of my expenditures - roughly - but the border guards weren't the slightest bit interested - so this year I didn't bother. What a mistake! The guard lectured me on the importance of keeping a record of everything I bought in the states and am bringing back with me - then had me pull over, get out my receipts, and make a list. He told me that if he searched my vehicle and found more goods than I had reported, I could be accused of smuggling and this could be on my record every time I crosses the border. After about 20 minutes, he came in and took a look - then suddenly turned into Mr, Nice Guy, told me that I'd done a good job and was free to go on my way. Clearly, the idea was to rattle me, so that from now on, I'll make a list. Well, I guess it worked, although what he was doing was pretty obvious. The whole border thing took about 40 minutes. So my re-entry into Canada was not exactly positive - and it was cold and raining and the drive was through ugly, bare fields. Home? Hmmmm . .  Galveston?  Ooooooooh!

I pulled into the Mountain View campground to find that wifi was extra - $15 for 2000 mb for the week - the water and sewer were not working - frozen ground, need to blow frozen feces out of the sewers - and sites that are back to back and very, very close. Generally a pretty poor excuse for a campground charging $45 a night!! Gee, ain't it great to be home . . .

My site in the Mountain View Campground

Down the street from my site

Saturday morning, I looked out the window to see a blanket of snow over everything! Insult to injury or what?!!
But - then Gregory, Anna, and Julia picked me up and we went to a Vietnamese restaurant for dinner and chatted - and suddenly the world looked a whole lot brighter!
I'll add pictures to this blog when I can access free, reliable wifi in my RV.  I'm at Gregory and Anna's apartment right now, using their wifi on my iPad - haven't figured out how to upload photos from Dropbox to this blog on this device, so I just do that on my laptop, which is easy!

Ouch!