Each Friday, I post some relevant (and not-so-relevant) stats about the trip, as well as a little write-up of what it’s like to live out of a van for weeks on end. Here’s where we are overall:
- Total miles driven: 10,261
- Total miles by ferry: 537
- Total days on the road: 102
- Total nights in a hotel: 4
- Total miles hiked: 105.94
It’s easy to see why our Milepost guidebook calls the area south of Cache Creek, BC the “Arizona” of Canada.
Some interesting stats for this week:
- Fuel stops: 5 (diesel: as low as $4.25/gal in Bellingham, WA up to $4.88/gal in Prince George, BC)
- Bears sighted: 2
- Buffalo sighted: about 30
- Manta Catamarans sighted: 1
Say…that looks like our boat! We recognized the distinctive profile of this Manta catamaran anchored off Lopez Island in the San Juans.
It’s been a looong week of driving, but yesterday we made our final border crossing back into the United States. Yay! Total number of border crossings for the trip: 12. This time we had to wait in line at the border with all the Canadians who were heading south for cheap gas and groceries. We were in line for about an hour, then I made the mistake of “declaring” that we had six – count ‘em six – cherry tomatoes in the fridge. Well, that got us singled out for an Agriculture inspection which meant that our van was searched inside and out for any additional stray tomatoes or other veggie contraband. If I had known the delay those stupid tomatoes were going to cause, we would have just eaten them while we were waiting to get to the checkpoint! Needless to say, our tomatoes were confiscated, and we finally made our way to Bellingham.
We were eager to get to the RV park because we’d ordered our mail delivered, and the package included our Arizona license plate tags for the van (which expire at the end of August, so we were cutting it close. I was worried about what might happen if we got pulled over in Canada without having proof of valid registration. We wouldn’t want a repeat of what happened with our Coast Guard documentation back in Martinique!) Luckily our mail was waiting for us when we arrived, we put our shiny new tags on our license plate, and were once again law-abiding citizens. Welcome to Washington!
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