Crossing the border into Canada had both Jeff and I a little anxious and nervous, lets just say there have been three seperate instances between the two of us while crossing into and out of Canada that could have escalated into criminal charges. But didn't. We stopped at a rest area in Northern Montana to retrieve all our papers for the dog, secure the trigger lock on the shotgun, find our passports, and to make sure there were no controlled substances hidden away in the vehicle or boat. The worry was for nothing and we paid our $25 firearm fee to a joyless Canadian civil servant (must be a cross cultural thing) and went through the required boat inspection (to prevent the spread of the invasive zebra mussel), Jeff fell quickly in love with the self identified "border girl" who gave our watercraft a clean certificate to travel north.
The rest of the day was a fairly monotonous day travelling through industrial farmland, past tar sands mines, dodging the traffic jams around Calgary and Edmonton (who knew?), and finishing the day in Northern British Columbia in the bustling hydro-fracking boom town of Fox Creek. The place was wall to wall with Wildcatters and Roughnecks and Canadian Rednecks.
We camped in the gravel driveway of a full to capacity municipal campground, surrounded by muddy pickup trucks and semi tractor trailers. It was a long and tiring day but we did however meet up for dinner with Darin, a forty something plumber driving a diesel 4x4 working a 24 day on, 4 day off shift living in a travel camper in the site next to us. He fired up his gas grill and poured a couple glasses of Glenlivet Scotch into plastic cups while cooking us up some more of the ribeye steaks we brought from Texas. We talked fracking, families, adventures, fishing, music, and more, the sun set about ten thirty and we walked back across the muddy parking lot to lay down in the van and sleep. Day four would break early as Jeff accidently woke me up at 4:30 because he saw the sun streaming in the windows, we brushed our teeth in the parking lot grabbed a coffee and were driving again by 5.