"Don't Shoot, We're Canadian!"

We were up early this morning anxious to set out on our trip to Newfoundland. Our very good friends Pat and Richard and our charming daughter Alanna slept at our house overnight, and we saw them off around 7:00 a.m. Then it was a quick dust, hoover, and clean, and we left around 9:46 a.m. The journey was quite uneventful – ‘till we got to the border. Not much traffic on the roads; met a few rain storms on the way, drove through Montreal and down to Sherbrooke. At that time, I was driving and Ray was navigator. He had the Garmin on, a map quest route laid out on his knee, and the route provided by the CAA. Of course, you know what happened. We got horribly confused! Spent about an hour circling around Sherbrooke. Ended up going right through the centre of town; had an exciting 10 km on a dirt road, in a pouring thunderstorm, trying to find Cookshire – we did, from a back road; then there was a freight train stuck on the tracks across the road; so we waited – probably about 20/25 minutes for it to clear. We didn’t dare try to find another route!!

We followed Route 212 then on to 161. The country was thickly forested with first Mount Orford, then Sugar Loaf as mountainous backdrops. We arrived at the border just past a lovely town called Woburn. Ray got out of the car to get our passports and was immediately yelled at by a portly US custom’s official to “get back in the car immediately”. Of course Ray didn’t hear him the first time, and he yelled again: “get back in the car immediately”. Which Ray did very promptly. Then we noticed the sign saying not to get out of your car until told. Well, as we were recovering from that, a pushy American woman drove right past us, snug up to the car in front, literally queue barging. I haven’t seen such a flagrantly pushy action in a long time. She had quite a nerve. Anyway, then it was our turn. We were literally interrogated by a second custom’s official. This guy shaven headed, very white, about mid 30s, and ….. mean! You could tell by the way he looked at us, that he didn’t believe anything we were telling him. He was threatening, intimidating, and seriously unfriendly. The sad part is, you knew it was all an act! They can turn it on , and turn it off. And he had it all turned on! I couldn’t help but think that he was going to “arrest” us on the spot for some trumped up charge. He asked us every question imaginable about ourselves: where we lived, where we were going, what we did, where we were staying the night – no? you don’t have somewhere to stay???..... Eventually eyeing us over, he said we could go once he saw the passports. So Ray got out of the car once again and got them out of our bag in the trunk and handed them over. Then of course he saw all of our South America stamps! So that was good for another 5 minutes of threatening questioning before he finally said to go. By this point, I hated the US, I hated all Americans, and the last place in the world I wanted to be was there. I felt very unwelcomed. I think the custom’s official was way off base. We came through at a small border town from Canada. Obviously “grey” power. We certainly don’t fit the terrorist “norm”…and anyone could see just by the stuff in our car that we were regular Joe Bloe’s. He repeated what we said that “ you are going to Halifax through the States and staying in Bangor overnight?” as his eyes pierced through us telling us “I don’t believe you”. I felt like saying: “Forget it”. I don’t want to go anywhere near your country. We’ll just turn around and go another route”. You would have thought when I said I was born in Scotland that it was an alien planet, not a best-friend of the US. Now, along with mean intimidating custom’s officials, there were also mean intimidating black flies. Hundreds and hundreds of them. As we were talking with the customs guys, the car filled up with these mean little bugs. When Ray came in from getting the passports the back of his white golf shirt was black – it was covered with them – so then there were more in the car. You know when a hive of bees swarm? That is what the black fly were like. Except of course, they are smaller, and so there were many, many more of them. The air was thick with them. Thanks goodness they were not biting. By the time we drove off, they were all over the back window, the front window, us and everywhere else in the car. We drove with the windows wide open until we finally got rid of them. Although the country side was beautiful, and the windy road fun to drive, that custom’s guy set the tone. I imagined all the people in the little cabins to be wild American hunters with guns killing deer and moose and fishing the fish to empty all the lakes. I was totally creeped out! Felt everyone was an enemy! Anyway, more seriously, the sides of the road were lined with beautiful, deep purple, lupins . Quite spectacular. We saw two very pretty deer by the side of the road, obviously hit and killed and left to die by reckless, uncaring, drivers. Then we saw a beautiful young female moose by the side of the road. She was quite spectacular! We slowed right down, and she stood and looked right at us, before slowly moving off into the forest. We also passed hundreds of American flags. In the small deserted towns, every lamppost had an American flag nailed to it. Some of the houses had flags all the way around the fences. I couldn’t make out whether the flags were to show all the tourists that they didn’t want to allow into the country that they were American; or to remind the citizens that are scared to leave there that they were American! Sorry, to all my American friends, but you can blame it on the unfriendly customs guys!! I truly love the US and Americans.....but I hope when we go down to North Carolina in August that the customs are more friendly!!

We drove for about another 5 hours after this, through the mountains, and the half-dead Maine towns. We saw very little on the roads, and it seems that everyone must go to bed really early, for most of the houses had no lights. Even in the small towns, it seemed that everyone was asleep. So about 9:30 we are starting to get really hungry. Nothing was open. It was really starting to get to us. Then, we drove around the corner, and voila, I have never been so glad to see a WalMart, a MacDonalds, a Burger King, gas stations, lights, ….and a motel! We pulled in, got a room for $67, $74 with tax, went to Mr. Submarine for supper and were back in the room by 11:00 p.m.

I am really looking forward to getting back into Canada tomorrow!