Surprise!

We arrived up here today at Dragon Lake, BC and discovered that we DO have internet access! What a nice surprise. Now I can keep you up to date.

See that truck in Jaden's hand? Well, Jaden had a great birthday party yesterday. I counted a total of 27 or 28 people there. It was a little overwhelming but he did pretty good. Had a couple of small meltdowns when someone tried to touch his cars. He is so protective of those cars. When he went to blow out the "2" candle on his birthday cake, a wheel of that truck in his hand put out the flame. It was so funny. He thought he had done something wonderful!

He got more "Cars" stuff like bedding for his car bed and several bubble making devices which he loves (not cars related). So, all in all, a very good day for the boy.

After the party, we headed home to load the final items into the trailer & off we went. Well, we got on the freeway, turned on the wipers just north of Island Crossing & bam - a windshield wiper shredded. So, we made a detour into Mt. Vernon to replace that. Of course, after we had it replaced, we didn't need to use them any more.

We crossed over the border at Alderbrook which is west of Sumas without any problems (other than the border guard snapping at us for not having signed our Visas yet). Well, George wanted to connect to the main road out of Sumas to get to the WalMart in Abbottsford to purchase his fishing license. That turned into a fiasco. We drove around & finally found it, but then ended up with a WalMart employee who is the Canadian model for those who should not be working with the public, money or laws. This kid was so stupid. He even told us that he was borderline illiterate. Well, he definitely OVER-estimated his abilities. He couldn't figure out what form to fill out, we could hardly read his handwriting, couldn't read the effective dates & used the resident fee schedule. So, he tore that one up. Then I jumped in & said I would fill out the form for him with George's info. He still ended up using the wrong fee schedule even after I helped him find it in the book. George kept saying to him that it couldn't be right because it was so much cheaper than last year. But, he insisted and charged us $37.80 instead of about $53.00. I gave him 2 $20 bills and he gave me $2.02 in change. When I pointed his error out to him, he didn't know how to open the till to make the exchange for 2 dimes. He finally took 20 cents out of his own pocket, gave them to me & then put the 2 pennies in the till through the check slot. Needless to say, I asked for a manager when we got to the front of the store & gave him some feedback.

So, all of the driving around & getting the license added 1 1/2 hours to our trip. We drove about 10 miles north of Hope & found a place to pull off the highway for the night at about 8 o'clock. I'll tell you about the rest of our night in tomorrow's blog.

See, something to look forward to already!