When G and I go on vacation, we typically have mild adventures. This is probably mostly due to the fact that we almost never have reservations anywhere or anything more than a rough estimate of where we plan to end up. One of our little adventures on our most recent trip involved our border crossing from British Columbia back into the US.
We had spent several days in British Columbia. Since we had been camping, we had a cooler with some food in it. (We had a terrible time finding a grocery store on this trip. It seems every town has a Future Shop in it, which we thought might sell food but in fact sells electronics, but grocery stores are less evident. When we finally found food, it seems that many things are ridiculously expensive. Cream cheese? $4. Cheddar? $7. Produce? The same as here.)
But I digress. So we get to the border, and the guard gives us what I assume is the usual once-over - checking our passports, quizzing us on where we're from, etc. Then he asked if we had any beef. G had just bought a beef kabob at the Public Market in Vancouver (that's another entry entirely), so he told the guard about it. We were instructed to park and take a yellow piece of paper inside to talk to agriculture.
Inside, we were grilled again on our hometown and asked about various food items we may have brought with us from Canada. Then the agriculture man took our keys and searched our car. That's right - searched our car. While we had to wait inside, out of view of the car. It was kind of weird.
Bottom line, the beef kabob was confiscated, along with some roast beef and breakfast sausage we had forgotten about and the core of an asian pear. We were then allowed to cross the border, back to the land of $0.99 cream cheese.
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Many years ago, I was taking the train back to the US from Montreal. Before leaving, my hosts had taken me to Ben's Deli for a smoked meat sandwich to take with me on the trip. When we got to the border, the Customs agents announced that no meat products would be allowed to enter the US. As they went through the cars, I sat in my seat with my smoked meat sandwich in a lunchbag next to me, trying my best to look nonchalant and innocent, instead of like the smuggler I really was. I had visions of being thrown into prison for the rest of my life. Fortunately, the agent skipped me (this was in the days before heightened security), so I got to take my smoked meat sandwich into the US, where I ate it with gusto.
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