PART II ~ CANADA

 For the next 24 days we will be traveling through Alberta, British Columbia and The Yukon to reach our destination of Alaska. We will be visiting Canada’s national parks, Banff and Jasper as well as the big cities of Calgary and Edmonton. We will quickly pass through British Columbia and The Yukon to enter Alaska on the southern route on the “Alaska Highway”. We exit Alaska on the northern route on the “Top of the World Highway”.

July 1st:  We thought we were prepared to go through the border. We looked it up. We had our passports and our vaccine cards ready. No Covid testing was required. When the border agent asked about our ArriveCanada application, we both had a blank look, huh? This was an online app where we entered travel info, health info, pictures of our passport and vaccine cards, etc. He handed us a paper with instructions and said we had to turn around and go through US customs, download the app, fill it out and then come back thru Canada customs. #@!!

Well, the Canada customs line was one car; us. The US customs line was really long; about 10 cars. When we got to the border agent, he asked how our day was going and we said lousy… he smiled and let us through, no questions asked.  He’s seen this before, probably many times, every day.

We pulled over and we had no internet to download the app. $!#@!! We went into the duty free store on the US side. It was more of a dive bar. The bartender saw the paper in our hands and immediately gave us the internet password. An hour later, an hour we will never get back, we finally drove into British Columbia, Canada.