America’s First Mile

Dy 40: It only took us 40 days to reach our goal! We traveled from Minnesota, down through Texas, across the bottom of the U.S., and drove all the way down to the Florida Keys start at the end of Highway 1. Now, at the top of Highway 1 in Maine, we have completed our mission.

The previous day, we traveled from Nova Scotia, through New Brunswick and rested about 30 minutes from the Mile Marker at a Wal-Mart in the province of Montreal. Montreal’s official language is French, so like EVERYTHING is in French. It’s cool, but we really don’t know any basic words in French (Chad has some Spanish and I have some German). Smile and wave, ya’ll!

In the morning, we cleaned up at Wal-Mart (chilly night in the high 30s) and hit the road to travel through small towns along the river. The lifeline of the towns were the operations of the paper mills and lumber yards. The tard roads were so rutted up! I was actually scared we would pop a tire in a foreign country in which we can’t communicate without a spare tire. Yes, this Jetta did not come with a spare, so we are free birding it!

Chad’s comment about potentially popping a tire and trying to communicate with the French-speaking natives of Montreal, “we just have to draw really pretty pictures and they will know what we are saying!”

When we did arrive at the border, we crossed a bridge to the U.S. side and were then directed to the canopy “where the officer will take care of you”. Uh…what?? So, Chad has a man bun and I have really curly red hair; we look like millennial hippies and they think we may have weed in the car (Canada has legal weed).

Chad parked the car, we left the keys on the front seat of the car (the officer joked saying no one was going to steal it here lol) and we were “detained” inside the building while they searched our car.

Following procedure for declaring items brought from Canada to the U.S. (veggies, animals, food, etc.), I mentioned we have clementines, a cucumber and an avocado with us. The officer sparked up and things got real.

“Citrus foods cannot be brought into the U.S. and we will have to confiscate that item. How many do you have?”

Uhh… like 10 little orange circles? It turned out to be 19 and one of us had to claim it. I took the criminal act on my name.

“Don’t worry, it won’t go on your record,” said the officer. Oh, jeez. Thank goodness, I would hate to be a citrus criminal!!!

They literally took the bag of clemintines out of the cooler and threw them away in their breakroom garbage can. They said that it’s been a thing for over 10 years now that citrus fruits cannot come across the border to help prevent a specific fruit fly from invading. Well, the more you know.

After the deal with border patrol, we literally drove the car no more than 200 feet from the station to the Mile Marker Memorial site lol. How lame did we feel. We sacrificed our 19 clementines for this! We were so sad, we needed a break.

We parked across the street at a little dinner in the small town and ordered up two omelets. Chad had the Western (bell peppers, onions, mozzarella) and I had the steak and cheese omelet. Super tasty (Chad’s was the winner).

Jitters now gone from the border crossing, we sighed and climbed back into the car to go BACK across the river to the Canadian side. Yes, we literally crossed the border to take a picture and eat food.

The guy working the Canadian border crossing was really chill and let us go right across without a search.

We told him about the clementine snatch and he scoffed in a VERY French accent, “we could care less about things like that.” I asked if he would stamp my passport (I don’t have a stamp yet and I’ve been in Canada at least 4 times now!) and he said they normally don’t do that anymore. But, he went to the back and stamped it for me! 😊THANK YOU.

On to the City of Quebec!!

We drove and drive through some interesting country along the river dividing the U.S. and Canada. Follow up soon about adventures in Quebec City!