Amerika, Again

Short Version:
One last headline, the Border Police say no to Nene, a long drive with an unpassing maneuvre, we end up in a junkyard

Long Version:
Running well behind schedule as usual, we barely had time to glance at the newspaper before we hit the road. Of course, this being Vancouver, the one headline we did note said "B.C. Leads National Study Into Vagina's Ecosystem."

At the border, we were asked to go inside the building, unlike the many Canadians and Amerikans who were being passed back and forth without undue delay. We'd been expecting to be accosted, though, as it had happened last time, so we weren't particularly concerned. Apparently, we should have been.

The Border Police gent who came to the counter was tall, stood with an almost military bearing, had a silver moustache, and was absolutely not going to let Janine into the country. Especially once he requested "The address where you will be staying and contactable tonight," and got: "Um... somewhere in the Wenatchee National Forest?"

Luckily for us, Officer Van Bever stepped in. He was, we found out, a dual-citizen Canadian-Amerikan with Scottish ancestry, and had served in the police in Canada prior to becoming a US Border Police officer. He asked lots of questions, like: "You have jobs to go back to in NZ, yes?" We answered all his questions honestly. ("Um... no.")

Basically, we answered every single question as wrongly as was possible, and by rights he should have blocked Nene's entry to the US. But, having recognised that no-one as naive as us could ever pose a threat to Amerika, he decided to let her in, and we rolled on down the highway towards Bellingham, past the rollerblader and the sled-dog transport truck who'd crossed the border much faster than we had, past the handpainted sign for the taco/guns/ammo shop and over the Nooksack River into Bellingham, where we finally bought another replacement camera.

We saw no Silvertip action in Everett, and both of us left Value Village empty-handed, which is both rare and disheartening. Not as disheartening, though, as passing a bus near the top of a fogged-in mountain pass and realising that without the lights of the bus ahead of us we were essentially blind. We unpassed the bus, and followed it to the end of the fog.

Finally, 400km and lots of hours after we'd left Vancouver, we found ourselves approaching Sand Creek, driving between huge piles of junk: cars, trailers, tyres, household appliances; you name it, there were piles of it on both sides of the road. Critters skittered about the place, half-seen in the glare of the Reaper's lights, and we were starting to wonder how we could have got so lost when all at once we were through, and back into forest, and then at the trailhead, where delicious foods were followed by some sleeping.