Good bye Canada, hello USA?

With bittersweet feelings our Canadian road trip comes to an end, just to give space to continue in the USA heading South. Canada is and remains in the middle of our hearts. Beautiful scenery, relaxed and kind people, stunning wildlife and well, somewhat cool weather, let's call it fresh. We enjoyed our time there, well over a 100 days.

When crossing the border to the USA we had some questionmarks. Without a visa (with ESTA) we can stay up to 90 days and we can return to the USA more than one time but leaving to Canada "does not count" as a reset. Our last entry was to Alaska in mid September and before that we had to drive to Delaware due to an earlier mistake with the licence plates (tags) of our car. So we were unsure how well the officers at the US border will welcome us. We also have some historic bad feelings with border crossings. So we were quite tense and hoped for the best knowing that we are not doing anything wrong. I was reading the google reviews of different crossings near Vancouver / Seattle and based on that we chose Lynden, WA, which is a relatively small and less crowded entry point. It was a good decision especially that this route was the shortest to our next overnight stop, a Wagyu cattle farm.

The first officer we met was very kind, asked the usual questions (from where, to where, how long, etc.) and he asked us to park the trailer a bit further and invited us into the building for the next steps. We did so and there a very upbeat, smiling and kind officer greated us. Asked the same questions but seemingly he was happy for us doing such a cool long tour with the kids. I just started to feel very comfortable when another officer came to us and started to flex his powers. He started a fairly long rant about how dangerous it was from a federal law point that we own the vehicle while not having proper visas and this is a signal to him that we want to establish our life in the USA (which we are not) and so on. Then I mentioned to him the practice of registering boats or airplanes under Delaware companies or running internet companies never visiting Delaware and we agreed to disagree. At this point I was quite sure that we will not be permitted to enter. Finally the kind officer took over the discussion, stopped his upset colleague and started to stamp out passports with the entry stamp. He wished us great travel and they did not even want to see our trailer at all.

So we walked out of the building with a big smile on our face. Such a relief that we can continue our trip as we planned and we do not have to worry about how to leave Canada with our dog and US plated car without entering the US by land. Now we focus on the next steps and plan our drive on the West Coast towards San Francisco.