Sun, Oct 5.... At the Border

Today should be a breeze... we only have about 150 miles to drive, the paperwork for our load of furniture going to British Columbia was taken care of, and all we really had to do was make a phone call to dispatch and verify our load had been accepted. What a breeze!

We slept in this morning until the coffee buzzer went off in my head. I made my way to the truck stop. Trapper prefers the very back row... so some truck stops... it's a hike. But, hey, I need the exercise.

We traveled through some gorgeous National Forest in Washington. Most of them, Indian names that I could not attempt to spell or pronounce.

Then we decided that we needed to get back to "work mode" and call dispatch and make sure our paperwork had been approved. We stopped at a TA Truck Stop.... again, the scenery was awesome.

Trapper called dispatch and spoke with our weekend dispatcher. We were told to fax the invoice pages and they sent the fax number to us via the QualComm. No problem... we got coffee, faxed a couple of pages and decided to drive on closer to the border. There was a truck stop at exit 275 off of I-5. We will wait there and go ahead and cross the border later this evening.

As we were driving off I noticed this truck. Our trucks in the east don't have these huge grill guards. I guess when you have Large Game you need Large Guards in case you accidentally run in to one!

We make our way to the truck stop at exit 275. We haven't heard from our dispatcher, so Trapper calls again. He says he will check on it and get back with us. Well.... ok, he never did so Trapper calls again. Our dispatcher had gone home! Well now, isn't that sweet.

CFI is a really good company to drive for, let me say that... but I believe that every dispatcher should have to ride along for atleast 2 weeks prior to dispatching. I know they have a lot of trucks to tend to, but they need to experience the road and then the war room. This is a hot load that MUST be delivered on time. We were following our instructions and our dispatcher goes home.... hmmmm.....

The second dispatcher we spoke to said it would be best to fax all the invoice pages! A 45 page fax!! And he explained the broker's office is closed and it would be about 6:00 am before they could confirm if we had been cleared or not. Glad we got here early....

We are at this little truck stop, if you will, close to the border crossing. This exit is for ALL commercial vehicles going in to Canada. There are 2-3 signs posted on the Interstate stating that you must stop here. This is the only truck stop I've seen that you have to pay to park. $5 overnight. You must stop here and you must pay to park! Cool.... business 101

We decided to walked a 1/2 mile to Burger King to eat and then Trapper went on to bed. He's not feeling real well, so he needs to rest. I'm sitting here looking at a Shell station about 200 yards away and I just realized there is a small airport landing strip between me and the Shell station.

Hopefully someone will get us our approval in the morning. We've had this furniture so long I'm afraid that my emotional attachment is going to turn to separation anxiety when we have to leave it with strangers.

My intentions were to do laundry this evening, but there are no facilities. My domestic duties are suffering this week. Maybe I can do our laundry in Canada... I could mark that off my "bucket list"!!!