Saturday, July 28, 2012

Road Trip -- Day 2

Hello from the Pacific Northwest!  We are on Day 2 of our trip to British Columbia; we went through Oregon and Washington, to get to beautiful Vancouver.  


Here we are in Oregon -- can you tell by the logging truck?  I decided to do a series of vignettes in my sketchbook and found lots of things to sketch in Oregon -- barns, lambs, all kinds of interesting things.  But in Washington -- trees.  Nothing but trees, bordering the highway all the way.  Not much to sketch!


At some point, we started to get close -- Vancouver ahead!   It doesn't look that far on the map, but it takes a loooong time to get through Washington State.  Finally, we made it to the border and were ready to go through customs -- 

I kind of freak out at customs.  My mother was an American citizen, but she had been born in Germany, and every time we went through customs when I was a kid, she would turn around and point her finger at us kids and say, "When we go through, no one talks but Dad.  Whatever you do, don't tell them I was born in Germany."  We would hold our collective breaths until we got through -- we couldn't imagine what horrible fate would lie ahead if one of us (e.g. my three-year-old brother) would pipe up and say "My mom was born in Germany!"  Would we be searched?  Would our mother be taken away?  Of course not, but when you're a little kid, you fear all kinds of crazy things.  So to this day, I get anxious when we approach customs . . . 

But . . . we had no problem getting through, and here we are!  We have a lovely room (suite, really) on the 15th floor of a downtown hotel.


We had a lovely dinner at our hotel's restaurant, and now we're relaxing, watching the Olympics.  More fun tomorrow -- 

 

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh I would just love to see some pages from your sketchbook!!!! Safe driving.

TexWisGirl said...

have seen enough scenes in movies, crossing customs is daunting for almost anyone.

Elise Ann Wormuth said...

Particularly because Canadian customs guys can be very hard on you, I know from past experience. I told everyone, don't get angry, don't make jokes, just say "Yes, sir," and "No, sir," and hope they don't decide to search the car (not that we had anything for them to find . . . ). Thanks for stopping by!