Crossing Over Into Canada - and the First Waterfall of the Trek! [260609]

(Posted 260613) Almost a week after leaving home, we were finally ready to cross the border into Canada - after a couple of final snags.  Our first day would involve a little driving, a little (Canadian) shopping, and some sightseeing - including the first waterfall of the trip!

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Despite things being fairly quiet (for a rest area) overnight, Tom still ended up waking up a little before 7 a.m. Tuesday morning and decided to get up and continue working on the blog to burn through RedPocket data while we still had it.  We were back on the road at our 10 a.m. scheduled time, heading northward.

We realized shortly after getting underway that we had forgotten to dump our milk before leaving the rest area, which we were supposed to do because that was definitely on the "prohibited" list for bringing into Canada (and was expired anyway), so we had to stop at a gas station to dispose of it.  That was snag one of the morning.

Snag two was much more annoying.  The previous evening, we had added the "Mexico and Canada Unlimited Pass" to Christine's Xfinity Mobile line, so she'd have some data to use while in Canada.  The process was supposed to take "up to an hour" to provision, and we were supposed to get an email when it was done to confirm that it was active - which we did.  We thought everything was set on that front.  Then at 10:35 a.m. - when we were about 25 minutes away from the border - Christine received the following text message from Xfinity:

We were not happy campers.  We immediately called the number, and were promptly dropped into a 10 minute hold queue.  As we drove further and further north, the cell signal degraded more and more until we were finally down to a single bar of LTE.  We decided at that point that it would be prudent to just pull over, activate the WeBoost, and stay in place rather than risk losing the signal and our place in the queue.  An empty church parking lot became our waiting room, and the WeBoost brought us back to a comfortable 2-3 bars of 5G for our wait.

The Xfinity agent we ended up talking to was less than helpful.  After the requisite identity steps, he asked what he could help with and Tom told him how we had tried to add the Mexico and Canada Pass last night, got the confirmation email saying it was done, and now - 20 minutes from the border - are being told that it wasn't, in fact, activated after all and that we needed to call them now to get it fixed - and that we were NOT happy about this.  "Oh yes, I can help you with that," says the agent - who then proceeds to try adding the Global Pass to the account 🤦.  Tom stops him and tells him it's supposed to be the "Mexico and Canada Pass", not the "Global Pass".  Agent replies "It looks like that's already active" to which Tom replies "yes, that's what the confirmation email said too - but the text message we just got says otherwise; why did we get that text message?".  Agent: "I can add it again.  It'll take up to an hour to activate."  Tom: "We'll be in Canada in an hour, and if it fails activation again we'll be there without service."  Agent: "Activating it again is all I can do.  If it fails again, just call us back."  Tom: "You're telling us that if the service fails to activate, we should call you back using the service that we don't have?!?!"  Agent: "Um..."  Tom: "I want to know if the service is really active or not, and why we got this text if it is."  Agent: "I can give you the number for the international help desk - they should be able to give you those answers."  Tom: "Ok, give us that number".  Agent: "Do you have a pen?  The number is 720-728-5462."  Tom (ready to explode at this point): "Dude - that's the number we called that routed to you.  You're the person who's supposed to be able to answer these questions!"  Agent: "Oh. (pause)  Please hold for a moment. (longer delay) I've spoken to my higher ups, and they confirmed the service is active.  They don't know why you got the text message."  (* sigh *)  We gave up at that point, said thank you, and hung up.

Twenty minutes later we were in the border town of Sumas.  At the border crossing, there were two lanes open for autos and we were a little confused why the car we had been following through town chose to get in line behind the car in the left hand lane instead of using the empty right hand lane.  In retrospect, we're guessing that it might have been because s/he knew which border agents were in which booths, and knew to avoid the right lane; we weren't that smart.  The agent on the left was not the friendliest border crossing agent one could hope for - and we ended up getting our apples confiscated (despite the fact that everyone who had been reporting on border crossings in the "RVing to Alaska" group have said that they weren't asked about produce at all).

We had to pull over and drop our six apples into one of the red bins shown here on our way through.

Now in the Canadian city of Abbotsford, our first stop was at . . . Costco!  Not to shop though; mostly just to sightsee - but also to cross a "local cuisine" item off our list.  It's rare that we have trouble finding parking at a Costco (particularly mid-day on a weekday), but the Abbotsford Costco parking lot was packed to the gills; we doubted we'd be able to find a parking spot at all without a lot of circling, and would never be able to find a pull-through spot like we prefer using.  Instead, we parked in the lot of the store adjacent to Costco (which had plenty of space) and then walked back over.

The first difference we notice between this Costco and a normal U.S. one is that it has a sizable propane refill station in the parking lot.  From the looks of it, though, they're only equipped to refill portable cylinders: there's no place to fill RV onboard tanks.

The warehouse was just as packed with people as the full parking lot suggested it would be.  It was easier for us to get around, though, because we weren't bogged down by a shopping cart.  We walked all the aisles just for fun, looking to see what products they had that were the same and what was different.  Even the vaguely familiar products were ever so slightly different, since all packaging in Canada has to have the text in both English and French.  We found a number of interesting items that we're pretty sure aren't available in the U.S., including powdered peanut butter, pistachio cream spread (made by the same company that makes their Dubai Chocolates), bacon poutine flavored potato chips, and ice cream drumsticks that are actually shaped like chicken drumsticks (although it was unclear whether they actually came in a KFC-like container inside, or whether that was just for the product photo):

Milk jugs are sold individually instead of being bound into pairs, and the jugs are 4 liter in size instead of 1 gallon.  The jugs looked slightly odd, and a quick conversion check showed that 4L = 1.06 gallons; we wondered whether they made their jugs wider or taller to accommodate the extra volume, since a standard U.S. gallon jug seems to barely fit on the shelf in the T42's refrigerator.

The bakery was interesting too.  We were to delighted to see that Canadian Costco not only carries our favorite Tuxedo Cake, but that the exchange rate makes it slightly cheaper in Canada.  Like the milk, sleeves of bagels are sold individually instead of in pairs as well.  They even have blueberry bagels - sort of.

Their bakery bread selection is almost completely different than in a U.S. warehouse, though.

"ALCAN" - we'll be there in a few days! 😜

After we were done walking the warehouse, we moved on to the Food Court for the "main event": poutine.  We had seen poutine in a few restaurants when we crossed over to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls on the East of the Rockies Trek, but didn't try it at the time.  We decided we had to try it this time around, and read that the Costco Food Court sells it.  (Note also that the hot dogs are still $1.50 - but that's $1.50 CDN, which currently exchanges out to just $1.07 USD!)

Tom thought that the gravy was quite tasty, and would've been rather good on top of some bland mashed potatoes.  Christine liked the (slightly salty) cheese curds as well.  But when combined together with the french fries, it made for a little salt bomb that we don't necessarily feel the need to try again.

We stopped at the Costco gas station on the way out to top off the tank.  Tom calculated the expected number of gallons as usual (because the ProMaster tank has a habit of clicking off early with some pumps, causing you to get only a partial fill if you're not paying attention) beforehand, only to remember once he got out of the car that he needed the figure in liters, not gallons, up here.  (He had switched the speedometer's units from "miles" to "kilometers" just after crossing the border; he switched the consumption units from "MPG" to Km/l" on leaving the gas station as well.)

Our next stop was the Walmart in town to do our actual shopping.  The first snag there was trying to get a cart; they were tethered together Aldi-style, but instead of needing an American quarter to unlock one you needed a Canadian $1 Loonie coin.  And all of the Canadian money we had bought from the bank back home was larger "paper" bills (which actually feel more like plastic).  Tom's attempt to use an American quarter instead failed (the locking system is calibrated to the Loonie's larger size), and he was also unable to find an untethered cart in the parking lot return corrals, so Christine got change for a $5 bill from Customer Service so we could unlock a cart - only to find when we got back to the carts that someone had left one there untethered.

The shopping trip ended up only being partially successful, since this Walmart (and possibly all Canadian Walmarts?) didn't stock the same items that we've gotten used to being commonly available at the American ones.  We failed to find frozen orange juice (or any frozen juices at all), Great Value lunch meat, nor the frozen onion and peppers mix.  We bought the cheapest turkey lunch meat they had (small packages, so Tom bought both an Over Roasted Herbed Turkey Breast and a Smoked Turkey Breast) to try out.  And it turns out that although a Canadian 4L milk jug is slightly taller than the gallon water containers we're carrying, it still barely fits on to our refrigerator shelf (* whew! *).

As we set out on the 46 km drive east to Bridal Veil Provincial Park, Tom tried to "get a feel" for what various speeds measured in km feel like.  He was very amused that "this is the first time we've ever gone 100 in the Travato!"

Along the way, we saw a pretty cascade pass by in the distance.

Two things of note about the sign below.  The first is that like most of the signs we saw by the side of the road, it is suspended from a metal pipe instead of being bolted to a post like the signs in the U.S. are; we're guessing that the hanger is hinged so that it can blow back and forth in strong winds instead of acting like a sail that will knock the whole signpost over?  The second is that it is indicating that there is a bike lane running right along the side of the 100 kph (62 mph) highway; we personally would not want to be biking that close to cars moving at that speed.

We photographed our first "Canadian wildlife" shortly after reaching Bridal Veil Provincial Park 😜.

Then we took the "15 minute" (Canada seems to measure their trails by time, not distance?) loop trail up the hill to see the falls.

We stopped for selfies and photos at the wooden railing, with the warning sign saying that it was dangerous to proceed beyond that point, like good little hikers.  Tom took the opportunity to try out the new neutral density filters he had bought for the trip, after complaining through almost the entire EotRT that he needed to buy a set so that he could take long exposure dreamy waterfall photos in brighter sunlight.  He was quite happy with the result ("with" and "without" versions below, "just this once").

In the time it took to take those photos/videos, quite a number of folks had passed by us going up/down the hill - many of whom looked to be in worse shape than we were and/or were wearing less suitable footwear as well.  We decided the warning sign was overly cautious, and proceeded up the hill to the base of the falls ourselves.

It started raining as we continued 36 km northeast to the town of Hope, known for its chainsaw sculptures.  As we pulled into town, we came upon another Canadian oddity: the blinking green traffic signal.  We later looked it up on Wikipedia, which had this to say on the matter:

In Canada, there is disagreement between the provinces over the meaning of flashing green ball signals. ... British Columbia has adopted a non-standard meaning for a flashing green light, using it to indicate that the signal is controlled by pedestrians (and occasionally bikes). These signals are placed either at intersections or mid-block to allow pedestrians and cyclists to cross a major road. Traffic lights are only installed facing the major road approaches, and if there is a minor road it is controlled by stop signs. The signal will flash green until a pedestrian or cyclist is detected. The green light typically changes to a solid green indication for a few seconds before changing to yellow and then red but the solid green phase may be omitted depending on the road authority that installed the traffic light. The intention of the flashing green is to let drivers know that the signal will only change to yellow for pedestrians but otherwise "rests" in green.

In Tom's opinion, the existence of the flashing green seems superfluous, since any green could potentially change from yellow to red anyway.  But anyhoo...

We found the little 4 x 2 block section of "downtown" Hope (it's really not that big) where the chainsaw sculptures are sprinkled around without too much trouble, parked, and got out into the rain.

This next pair of sculptures pay homage to the fact that the 1981 film First Blood (the first Rambo movie) was filmed in Hope.  (You can even pick up a "Rambo Walking Tour" map of all the major filming sites from the Visitor Centre if you're so inclined; we were not 😉.)

This next one didn't have a plaque, but Tom titled it "Husband Avoiding Wife":

Also plaque-less, so: "Hunter Hiding from Bear"?  Regardless, it was much more humorous "from behind".

In addition to the chainsaw sculptures, there were also a few nice murals sprinkled around town.

After Christine stopped into a small local market to buy some produce, we headed 5 km back down the road to the Silver Creek Travel Center where we'd be staying the night.  After signing in, we settled in for the night.

Disconcertingly, about 20 minutes later a pair of RCMP vehicles pulled into the spaces next to us, and each let a "passenger" out of the rear seat.  Some sort of Canadian "catch and release program" 😜?  We lost track of where the two release-ees disappeared to, but the Mounties drove off about ten minutes later.

Tom set up the Starlink on the dashboard before dinner (another tinned fish and rice variant for Tom, and quinoa cakes and rice for Christine; shared canned corn for both), and by sacrificing his sweatshirt as shim material he managed to get perfect, unobstructed alignment which gave us the advertised 0.5 Mbps data rate.

Later, Christine noticed that her phone could see - but not connect to - a "Pilot/FlyingJ" Wi-Fi somewhere.  We put the repeater on top of the T42 and aimed it at the Pilot gas station 300 m away across the highway, and were able to pull in 3 Mpbs down and 1 Mbps up, so Christine used that for her planning work while Tom continued on with the Starlink to finish the Olympic Penninsula post.  Later in the evening, rain forced us to put the repeater into the Dollar Tree cake server that Tom had modified for just that purpose before this trip; it kept the unit dry, like we hoped it would.

Bedtime was around 1:30, to the continued pitter patter sound of rain on the roof.  Tomorrow we'd continue heading north, through some canyons with some sightseeing along the way.