I really don't know what to say about all the horror stories. My wife and
her daughter and I drove through to Alberta and entered in North Dakota. No
problem what so ever. Came back into Montana, again no problems at all.
And as far as conversations. Had a nice chat with both sides of the custom
folks. No guns drawn or strip searches resulted. Oh well.
Maybe it was the mini van that saved us.
Dan/W4NTI
"WG" wrote in message
...
I was a traveling photographer in 1988 and was looking for a place to
stay.
All of the hotels and motels on the Canadian side were full so my partner
and I decided to try to stay across the line. His car had all of the
camera
equipment in it. To make a long story short I got through and he got
carded
so I went to ask him about the camera equipment. I asked the inspector if
I
could talk to him and he hit the deck with his semi-auto leveled at me.
When
the guys in the booth and the office saw this on the video monitors 3
shotguns and a second semi-auto were leveled at me. I learned that you
don't
say anything and don't get out of your car. This was back in the days when
Canadian Customs didn't even carry guns but I found out that the US sure
did.
One other thing about the last trip across on Friday going into the US one
of the cars one lane over from me stopped a little too close to the
inspector as he was searching the car in front and out came the gun. That
made for a tense few moments.
"Dwight Stewart" wrote in message
...
"WG" wrote:
No I didn't ask if he was a Ham because I know
that if you try to do anything besides answer
the questions they will take you off to one side
and strip your car down then after about 1 hour
they will let you put it back together. One time
I asked a question to a customs officer and ended
up looking down the barrel of a shotgun on the US
side.
Good grief, what did you ask the officer? I can't think of a simple
question which would solicit that type of response.
Coming into Canada 2 years ago I made a comment to
the Canadian Customs Inspector about having a nice
trip and got yellow carded. After being personally
searched they then had us go out to our car and
watch as they striped it down. (snip)
You don't have very much luck with police and customs officers, do
you?
I've crossed into and out of Canada probably more than a hundred times,
all
without any experiences like this. My vehicle was only search once, and
then
each section only glanced at for a few seconds.
Dwight Stewart (W5NET)
http://www.qsl.net/w5net/