Live. Travel. Play.

We’re in the USA! We left Calgary last night at about 7 pm and picked up a Swiss Chalet dinner to eat on the road (if you look at the photo below, you’ll see that the quarter-chicken I ordered looks kind of like a buttocks). We drove toward the border via the historic and very scenic Crowsnest Hwy (#3). The plan was to get as close to the border as we could that evening. After four hours of driving in the rain, we stopped at a well-treed rest area about 15 minutes east of Fernie, BC, where we opened a bottle of champagne and celebrated the first day of our trip. The champagne wasn’t very good, actually. We had to cut it with some juice. But we were happy as clams.

And then I started worrying again about Henry, our travelling plant. The overnight temperature was going to be 3 degrees Celcius. We weren’t sure if Henry was built for that kind of cold. And then I remembered that the US border patrols confiscate fruit and other produce if they catch it in your vehicle. It occurred to me that Henry might be taken away from us. Gregor said, in his usual practical manner: “If they take him away, we’ll get another.”

This morning, Henry was just fine and we crossed the border into Idaho with zero hassles! Thank goodness. I think I would have made a scene if they kidnapped the plant.

The rest of our day was action-packed. We stopped in Fernie for a breakfast bagel, then stopped in Sandhill, WA, for elevensies (an 11 am snack) – we bought some fresh salad greens at the downtown Farmer’s Market to go with our can of sardines. Stopped again in Spokane, WA, to pick up a wireless hotspot device, which will allow us to have mobile access to the Internet during out trip (I’m posting this article with it now, in fact). And the highlight of our day…We ate an awesome lunch at an ultra-tacky Mexican Restaurant called “Rancho Viejo”, where the burritos were mega huge, super delicious, and ultra cheap. We even have leftovers for dinner! Do we know how to live, or what?

By the way, gas is less that $1.00 CAD per litre in Washington State today. We picked a good time to travel south.