We met Chico for lunch downtown in Seattle, but, wait! He was late, and we ate without him! Hong absolutely had to have some french fries, so we wandered around the market looking for some. We split up, and Luke and Lena went jacket shopping as we picked up some chains from Les Schwab. They have this nice offer where you can return chains that you don’t use. We didn’t get any free beef, though.
Next stop was REI, we bought bungee cords to put the snowboards on the roof rack, as well as some other supplies. It was getting quite late, and we headed towards the border. Of course, by this time, it was rush hour, so we got stuck in commute traffic. We got stuck in a long line at the border, and by the time we got to the front, we handed the nice Canadian border guard our four driver’s licenses and one passport, and he asks, “do the rest of you have proof of citizenship?” “Well, yes, it’s in the back.” “You waited in that line for an hour and you didn’t go get it?”
So we had to pull over to the Immigration building and talk to the nice lady there. The conversation was basically: “You can prove you’re American, right?” “You aren’t planning on staying, are you?” “No, really, we don’t want you to stay here, are you sure you aren’t sneaking in to steal our jobs?” “Do you have enough money that you won’t get your sorry American asses stranded in our beautiful country?” “Okay, go on in.”
We stopped in Richmond (a quite Asian suburb of Vancouver) and found a very decent Chinese restaurant for dinner. I finally got to eat Peking duck. As we continued driving, I realized that the Canadians never had an Eisenhower to initiate proper freeway-building initiatives. Their freeways just sort of stop when they hit a major city, and you have to drive through surface streets through to the other side. We got a very weird sight as we went over the bridge into Vancouver, there was a crazy kid facing off a bunch of police on the bridge… and amazingly, traffic on the side we were on barely slowed down. I guess they mind their own business in Canada.
Fast forward two hours of twisty night road driving, and we’re at the cabin (Luke’s favorite part of the directions: “Turn left about 35 kilometres north of the stoplight.”). There’s a good deal of snow on the ground, and it’s just barely below freezing, so it’s been there for a while, but it’s not unbearably cold. (-1 degrees C is much more bearable than -1 degrees F.)
Luke and Hong figured out how to operate the wood stove (although we didn’t quite perfect it until later) and we all claimed our rooms. (And there were still two rooms to spare… so many people flaked on this trip. :P)
Next up, the actual “fun” at Whistler in Part Three. (I know I’ve forgotten something on this day, oh well.)