35 - June 26, 2018, Minot, North Dakota and Crossing into Canada

Where we are now, Estevan, SK, Canada

We spent an uneventful night in the Minot, ND, Walmart. The Village Inn restaurant close to us had free wi-fi. Adam managed to set up our wi-fi amplified antenna and our own router and network. Everything working well. We even watched a little Netflix before we both fell soundly asleep in our huge and comfy bed. It was a nice cool night, down into the 60's.
This morning, we were up around 8 am and we could feel that it was already fairly warm out, probably around 80F. We went to the Scandinavian Heritage Park for a quick picnic lunch. Very nice park with examples of Scandinavian architecture. Beautiful sunny day, a little warm though. High in the upper 80's.

Then we went to find a place to help us undo our cargo carrier hitch extender. We had bought it from good old Harbor Freight and it would not come off. We bought a new one that added about 5" more clearance to our cargo carrier. We could NOT get the old one off. We found a machine shop and the guy had it off in less than 5 mins with his pneumatic hammer. 

We bought this double hitch extender. We needed to raise our cargo carrier up a bit. It was just too low to the road. With this, we used the upper receiver and it lifted our carrier a good 5"

Now our cargo hitch carrier is riding a little higher.

We managed to get a few other odds and ends taken care of here in Minot. Like dumping our sewer tank. Where did we dump? Why Shatz, of course. Really, that's what it's called. Of course, the locals pronounce it "shotz."

I think Bingo is pretty big here in Minot.

Then, it was back on the road. We didn't leave Minot until about 5:30pm. Our next stop would have us pulling into the campground at 8:30pm. At least that's what we hoped. 

We arrived at the Canadian border and Adam did the talking.

"Do you have any firearms?"

"Yes, Sir, I have a pistol."

Well, that did not go over well at all

They took Winnefred into a garage and closed the door and searched her. Meanwhile, Adam and I were purposefully separated, questioned and asked to wait.

Long story short, Adam offered to surrender the gun to the Canadians. They didn't want it, too much paperwork. Instead, they hand delivered Adam's gun to an American Border Guard and asked us to return to the US. This way we would not be arriving to the US with a firearm.

That's the actual hand-off below:

So then we drove back to the US side. We were told to park our RV,  go inside and wait. 

We explained that they now had the gun in their possession, one of their guards had it. After 20 minutes of waiting, they asked a couple of questions to us both, ie, jobs, why we were in Canada etc. They told us to sit back down in the waiting room. 

They finally called us back up. The guard was very pleasant this time around, much nicer than our first meeting. I think she found out Adam is an Air Force vet, and that changed her mood. Anyway, turns out one of the guards that works for US Customs and Border Control sometimes takes guns like Adam's in our situation and ships them back to the US. He's a registered gun dealer and is able to do this. The guard left the counter and came back with directions to this guy's house. The guard told us we could not ship ammunition, but she offered to dispose of it for us. It was only 6 rounds. Anyway, we drove the mile or so to this guy's house and he and Adam arranged the whole thing. $50.  He'll ship it to another registered gun dealer in Jacksonville, FL, and Adam can pick it up from him when we get back. Whew! if they hadn't offered the shipping option, we would have had to drive all the way back to Minot. 

With the gun in the hands of the shipping dealer/US Customs and Border Control guard, we were free to attempt entering Canada again.

We got the same guard.

This time, we made it through. In case anyone is interested, you can only bring "long guns" like rifles or shotguns into Canada, as long as your final destination is Alaska.

When we finally crossed into Canada, we were greeted by a great, straight road and a fantastic sky.

We drove the 30 mins or so into Estevan, Saskatchewan, Canada, where we are now parked for the night in a Walmart. We both had a wonderful hot shower and went to bed.

We definitely need to brush up on the metric system.