[magoo]

My wife and I will be taking an RV trip this summer that will have us crossing into Canada at Buffalo, NY and re-entering the US so we can cross the Mackinac bridge. Might be in Canada about two days. We have heard horror stories about customs at the border crossings (like having to throw away perfectly good opened bag of dog food because no US receipt for its purchase could be produced). Any advice for us? Things to watch out for? We'll probably have an open bottle of gin, and a few bottles of wine. Any problems there? Any problems with food in the refrigerator? Thanks in advance for any help.

[bkcunningham1]

You'll need a passport, enhanced driver's license or NEXUS Card.

From Canada Border Services Agency website:

http://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/publicati...f5082-eng.html

Alcoholic beverages
Alcoholic beverages are products that exceed 0.5% alcohol by volume. If you meet the minimum age requirements of the province or territory where you enter Canada, you can include limited quantities of alcoholic beverages in your personal entitlement. Minimum ages for the importation of alcoholic beverages, as prescribed by provincial or territorial authorities, are as follows: 18 years for Alberta, Manitoba and Quebec; and 19 years for the remaining provinces and territories.

You are allowed to import only one of the following amounts of alcoholic beverages free of duty and taxes:

1.5 litres (53 imperial ounces) of wine; or
a total of 1.14 litres (40 ounces) of alcoholic beverages; or
up to 8.5 litres of beer or ale.
Note:
The CBSA classifies "cooler" products according to the alcoholic beverage they contain. For example, beer coolers are considered to be beer and wine coolers are considered to be wine. Beverages not exceeding 0.5% alcohol by volume are not considered to be alcoholic beverages.

The quantities of alcohol you can bring in must be within the limit set by the province or territory where you enter Canada. If the value of the goods is more than the free allowance, you will have to pay duty and taxes, as well as provincial/territorial assessment on the excess amount. In Nunavut and the Northwest Territories, you cannot bring more than the free allowance. For more information, check with the appropriate provincial or territorial liquor control authority before your arrival to Canada.



http://gocanada.about.com/gi/o.htm?z...el/faqs-e.html

[jmitchell]

Originally Posted by magoo

My wife and I will be taking an RV trip this summer that will have us crossing into Canada at Buffalo, NY and re-entering the US so we can cross the Mackinac bridge. Might be in Canada about two days. We have heard horror stories about customs at the border crossings (like having to throw away perfectly good opened bag of dog food because no US receipt for its purchase could be produced). Any advice for us? Things to watch out for? We'll probably have an open bottle of gin, and a few bottles of wine. Any problems there? Any problems with food in the refrigerator? Thanks in advance for any help.

Magoo,

We had to relinquish our firewood going in and our citrus coming out! Below is my husbands blog from that part of the trip. The lines were long coming out. Going in we took the Ferry. It was GREAT!

4th Aug 2009
Day 71 � Olympic National Park, WA to Victoria, BC


Mike – For the first time since we quit our jobs we had to get up early in the morning to make an appointment, i.e., the ferry to Victoria. The boat was scheduled to leave at 8:20 am, but we had to be there at least an hour ahead of time. That meant, in order to have enough time to get up, get our morning coffee, rig for getting under way, unhook our shore lines and drive to the port, we had to set the alarm to 5:30 am. We don’t even really have an alarm clock, so we had to set our cell phones. I can tell you, we did not like getting up that early. Nonetheless, we leaned forward into it.

The trip across the Strait of San Juan de Fuca was exciting, though the fog made it difficult to see much. We were actually leaving the country with our RV and we felt like we were on a mini sea cruise. We sat in the lounge area with an older couple from Palm Springs, which is not far from where Julie’s brother and mother live. In fact, when we visited her mother Christmas before last, we took a side trip to golf there. I was wearing a Naval Academy sweat shirt, so the guy remarked on it, saying that he had a nephew and a niece who went to the Air Force Academy. That led to a very pleasant conversation about their extended family, their travels, and his WW II service as a bombardier in the Pacific.

We had made reservations at an RV park outside of Victoria. Of the three that were listed in our Travel Life Directory, this one appeared to be the closest to the city and it looked pretty good on line so we selected it and reserved an “Ocean” spot (the other choices were “Garden” and “Lagoon”). Boy, were we pleased when we got there. The park was right on the ocean and it had its own little private beach. It was a very well maintained campground, with all the usual (though sparkling clean) amenities like bathrooms, showers and a laundry room. It had a great lounge area with a pool table and big windows that looked out on the ocean (and our spot). They even put out a morning paper every day. To sit in the lounge felt like you were sitting in someone’s seaside home. Since we arrived so early from the ferry (around 10:45) and it was a beautiful sunny day, we decided to treat ourselves to a day at the beach and lay out in the sun all afternoon. Ahhhhh….

That evening we watched a seal lion and her young pup playing in the water only about fifty yards offshore. It was truly an idyllic location.

------------
6th Aug 2009
Day 73 � Victoria, BC to Burlington, WA


Mike and Julie – OK. This is the best story of our trip, so far. We have been contemplating the route for the next leg of our trip. The problem is we don’t have connectivity in Canada to do research on the web without having to pay an exorbitant amount of money for each web download (a shortcoming of our broadband plan), so we can’t do things like find places of interest, check distant weather reports, check to see what possible RV campground look like, etc. We’ve been kind of dithering back and forth about whether we want to go to Vancouver and continue on to Banff National Park near Calgary, or head back down into the States and go to North Cascades National Park in Washington. As a third option, we’ve even discussed the possibility of going back down to see Portland, which we missed due to the heat wave last week. So today, while doing some sightseeing around southern British Columbia, we figured we’d check out the ferry schedules for boats that leave out of BC to go to Vancouver and back to Washington.

We planned on staying at our wonderful RV campground at Weir’s Beach for a third night, but had to move out of our “Ocean” view site to another site just up the way. Our favorite site had been previously booked by someone else. So we packed all of our gear up that morning, including the bikes, since we also had thought about checking out one of the two bike trails in the area today. All loaded up, we headed out to the town of Sydney to find the ferry terminal to Washington. We found it, but learned that the ferry leaves only twice a day (one around 11:00am and the other at 6:30pm) and the next day’s morning trip only had first-come-first serve spaces left. We were told that our best chance to get on it would be to get there early the next morning (NLT 8:00am) and hope to be one of the first ten vehicles in line. That would have meant getting up before 6 am because our campground was about an hour’s drive from the ferry. We weren’t savoring that thought. So we headed up the road to Swartz Bay, from which the ferry to Vancouver departs. As we neared the ferry terminal, we accidentally bypassed the turnoff lane for Parking and headed directly to where the sign indicated “Vancouver” ferry terminals. Well, we were surprised to see that ALL lanes of the highway emptied directly into toll booths for the ferries and there were no turn-around opportunities that we could see. It looked like we were trapped and had no choice but to get on the boat. We looked at each other and just started laughing – Mr. and Mrs. Toads Wild Ride! Now, I’m sure we could have talked to the toll booth operator and he would have directed us on how we could get out of the ferry line, but we talked quickly about whether we really wanted to go back to our less-spectacular view at Weir’s Beach or simply head on out. We decided, what the heck, we’re here. Let’s do it! This is the best part of always having everything with us. Our moments of error become moments of adventure. It is so freeing to just be able to go with the flow – even the flow of our mistakes. No stress! So off we went on another Mr. and Mrs. Toad’s wild adventure.

While we were on the ferry, we talked about whether we wanted to spend time exploring Vancouver or whether we wanted to go back down into Washington and check out North Cascades. We had been to Victoria, and while it was a nice town, we had decided that we much preferred scenes of nature over city scenes. So when we got off the boat, we headed south toward the states.

We arrived at the border, not knowing what to expect except for a 90 minute wait that we had been warned about by one of those highway signs that blink warnings at you (like the ones around DC to command you to “Report suspicious activity”). The cars started backing up about a half mile before the check points and it appeared that they were being held up at a stop light and then sent forward in batches. Why they were doing this was unclear, as essentially we were simply going from one line to another. But, rules are rules, so we waited our turn to wait some more. We finally, got into the second wait line, which expanded from two lanes of traffic to three lanes of check points. We figured we’d just stay in our lane. Big mistake. We watched as the other two lanes moved along at a crisp fashion while we inched along at a snail’s pace. When we got close enough to the check point to see the agent who was working it, we watched him as he flitted back and forth between the cars he was working and the main building, doing this on every vehicle. The other lines appeared to not have whatever issue that was causing our agent to hurry back and forth. Maybe he had a bad case of the runs? We figured we had simply encountered one of those over-achievers who had been given a little bit of authority and was working it for all he could. We waited our turn.

Finally, we moved forward. The following is an actual transcript of our conversation (it may remind you of an old Abbot and Costello routine).

“Do you have anything you acquired in Canada?” asked the border agent.
Mike thought about the bad case of diarrhea he got from a couple of oysters he had eaten in Victoria, but said, “No, everything we have we got in the U.S.”
“Do you have any food items?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Julie.
“What do you have?” he asked.
Julie answered, “Well, we’ve been living in our RV for two months. We pretty much have everything we need.”
“Well, what is that?” the guard persisted.
“Do you want us to include the condiments and boxed and canned goods, or just the perishables?” Mike countered.
He narrowed it down for us. “What kind of fruit and vegetables do you have?”
We had loaded up with groceries just before coming into Canada so we had a pretty full refrigerator. Mike began to recite them one by one:
“Mushrooms, lettuce, onions, potatoes, a few blueberries, some scallions…”
Realizing that we fully intended to list every item in our refrigerator, the officer finally let us in on the newest (apparently secret) addition to the Terrorist Watch List…”Citrus…Do you have any citrus?”
We thought carefully, trying to remember the members of the citrus family (bananas? strawberries? What about tomatoes? Are they a fruit or a vegetable?) Then Julie quickly realized what the correct answer had been all along, “No,” she said, “we don’t have anything.”

“That’s good,” said the guard, “because citrus is not allowed to enter the country, even if it was bought in the United States. If it comes in from Canada, it must be EXTERMINATED.”

We kid you not, that’s the word he used - exterminated. Exterminated? Exactly how does one ‘exterminate’ a citrus fruit? With a juicer? A blender? Maybe they are hand-sliced to ensure a slow death. Are they tortured first, to see if they know of any other citrus fruits that are attempting to cross the border? Is the US government seeking a final citrus solution?

We laughed as we drove off, realizing that the guy had never even looked at our passports nor did he look in the RV. We could have been harboring Osama bin Laden, or weapons, or drugs – but he didn’t seem to care about theses things – only CITRUS!

When we had entered Canada, they gave us a printed piece of paper as we got on the ferry that included a short list of items that were not allowed to enter the country (we had quickly offered up our bag of firewood, a forbidden item, when we arrived in Victoria). They really made it simple and easy to “execute” and the Canadian border agent even looked at our passports and asked Julie to take off her sunglasses. Not so when coming into the states. It seems that the U.S. thinks that somehow by keeping the “forbidden items” a secret makes things more efficient and makes it more likely that they will catch any fruit smugglers! Maybe this is part of the entry test for immigrants. If you can put up with the run around from a border agent, you’re ready for the full US bureaucracy.