Day 6!

Whew what a day. We did finally make it to Canada. This was our hardest day a driving so far and should be the hardest of the whole trip. We wanted to make it to Canada by today to allow plenty of time to enjoy the drive on the Alaskan Highway.

I guess I will start with the good part of the day, we got up on time, ate breakfast and left the hotel by the time we planned to. We left Billings, MT this morning about 6:30 AM (mountain time) and headed north and west. We took a series of highways today instead of sticking with the interstate route. It seemed to have been a lot faster. It was a beautiful drive through the country side with lots of viewings of more mule deer and antelope. We even saw some more bison today. One of the other cool things we saw today were several windmill farms, it is amazing how huge those things are. The drive was uneventful and we made really good time, which turned out to be a very good thing when we hit the border.

First of all, let me start by saying thank you to all of you that have been praying for us and for an easy border crossing. However, God had a different will in mind and it was far from easy. It could have been worse, we know, but nevertheless, it was a very stressful 2 ½ hours. The only thing we can figure is that when they ran our info in the system we must have had a red flag because we are hand gun carry permit holders. The escorted us into a large three bay double long garage where they made us exit the vehicle. They first asked us if we had any guns, we of course said NO, then they asked if we owned any guns, we of course said yes (out of fear of lying and getting caught). They then took each of our sets of keys and told me to go sit in a large waiting room while they questioned Kevin. This took about 30 minutes and they badgered him about guns and drugs. Despite Kevin trying to explain that we had NO guns with us it seemed as though they were convinced we had some. After the 30 minutes of questioning, they proceeded to EMPTY the truck. They scanned every box in an x-ray machine then opened them and went through them. All the while we had to sit in this waiting room and watch through the glass windows as this took place. They would not allow me to help unpack or arrange the boxes as they were unpacked so that I could make sure I could get it all back in. What took them three people and 30 minutes to disassemble it took Kevin and I 1 ½ hours to put back together. I was so frustrated I was nearly in tears but we had to do this all with a smile on our faces and pretend like we weren’t bothered because we didn’t want to cause ourselves any more heart ache than necessary. There was one guy that seemed genuinely upset that he didn’t find anything. We were all set to go, we thought when the guy that seemed upset and quite frankly hell bent on finding a problem decided that he needed to run Kevin’s license through the system to see if he had ever been arrested. Well, that didn’t show up anything either so the guy rudely handed Kevin his license back and told him to back the truck out of the stall and turn left to be on our way. In the midst of all this going on they never asked me any questions nor did they ask to see my license. Kevin just has that attraction I guess.

Well, we went on our way and tried desperately to enjoy the rest of the afternoon, but it was very difficult. We did make it to our hotel in Calgary, Alberta around 7:30 this evening. Now all we want to do is go to bed. Please continue to pray for our safe journey and that we will be able to put today behind us and enjoy the rest of the trip. Maybe someday we will be able to look back and laugh about this day.