Predictably, I woke up at 5am. After giving myself fifteen minutes to get back to sleep and failing, I figured I might as well make use of the time and hit the road, without breakfast. I wanted to get across the border and know that I was done with American immigration once and for all. The smoky haze still lingered in the air as I drove the hour I had left to America. As I neared the town of Somas, where there was a crossing, I was a little nervous. I just hoped this would work.

It was about 6am when I drove up to the only open gate into America. I was happy to see I was the only one there. The officer started with all his questions and he seemed to understand everything. When he handed me back my passport I told him I would be back through in a while since I was turning around to go back into Canada to activate my work permit, to return to the US after. He got a bit pissy at that, asking me why I’d just explained that I was heading to Seattle if in fact I was going back into Canada. Eventually he let me go, wishing me luck in a sarcastic tone.

As soon as I was in America, I did a u-turn to go straight back into Canada. When I’d entered Canada originally in Ontario, the lady at the border services agency had misunderstood the conditions of my work permit letter and hadn’t issued me a permit. I hoped to have better luck this time. If it worked, it meant I would be able to return to Canada over the next two years and work. At the gate, I spoke to a nice guy who asked me the usual questions, then after perusing the work permit letter, he sent me inside.

There was nobody in the office and a lady at a counter saw me straight away. I explained what had happened in Ontario and straight away, she understood what was going on. She asked me to take a seat and wait a while and ten minutes later, she had stapled a work permit into my passport and ran through it with me. I could come back to Canada any time up until August of 2019 and work while I travelled. Brilliant! I thanked her profusely and left the building. Not celebrating yet, I still had to get back into America.

I had about $30 of Canadian money left so I went into the Duty Free store to see what I could waste my dollars on. When I saw a bottle of Canadian maple syrup, that had Dan’s name on it and a case of beer brought me up to the total. There were two ladies at the front desk that helped me count my coins and like a kid in the candy store, I asked what I could buy with the $2.75 I had left over. Some sour candy did the trick, they took 20c off the price so I had absolutely no money left as I exited the building.

Now to get back into America. There was a small queue now with two booths open. I stuck to my original booth to up my chances of getting the same guy. I actually saw him out there but by the time I crept forward, he was gone and I had a new guy. This one got completely confused by my story, looking at both my passports and eventually giving up and sending me inside. Ok, minor setback. Inside, I took my place behind an Asian family who hadn’t filled out their online forms properly and an old farmer who had confused business and pleasure when describing the purpose of his visit to transfer tractor parts. I patiently waited my turn and was happy that it was my original officer that called me forward to the desk. I waited for him to ask the questions and he asked if I’d gotten my Canadian visa ok. I said I did. He operated very slowly as he asked some more useless questions and after showing him my flight out of San Francisco, he said he’d go get my passports real quick. By real quick, he meant waddling over at a glacial pace to the outside booth and retrieving my documents. After double checking when my exit flight was, he handed me my passports and told me I was free to go.

I could barely keep the smile off my face as I walked to my car. Once my door was shut, I yelled out in glee, I’d gotten the Canadian visa I wanted and I was back in America! Now all I had to do was find my way to Dan. It was 8am and I sent him a message letting him know that we were in the same country again. He was just south of Seattle and proposed a lake just outside the city that we could meet at. By the time he left his Walmart camp, we were about the same distance away, so the race was on.

As I neared the destination, I had to pull off to go to the bathroom, unable to hold it any longer. A quick stop at Maccas and I carried on my way. I was off the highway now and looking for the forest road that would lead to Masonry Lake. When I found the road, I also found Dan. He was standing by his van with Cleo nearby, he’d gotten there only minutes before I had and parked in front of the locked gate. I couldn’t believe it, there he was! He met me at my driver’s door and we had a huge hug while Cleo padded around near our feet, she knew who it was and was almost as happy to see me as Dan was. We hung out at the closed gate for a while, talking about how good our timing had been, then drove off to find our lake. It wasn’t accessible thanks to more closed gates, so we settled on going to Rattlesnake Lake which was a day use area that had looked pretty popular. We parked and managed to find a spot under the shade of a tree where we could hang out, catch up and people watch.

As we approached our tree, Cleo’s ears perked up and her body stood to full attention. She’d see a bunny sitting in the grass. She started stalking towards it then run full pelt at it with it running off in fear. We only saw glimpses of her after that as she chased the poor bunny blindly. Oh, how I’d missed this dog. She came out of the bushes eventually, covered in scratches from the sharp barbs and wrecked. While Dan went to the bathroom, I went over to our shady tree spot and took Cleo into the water. To my surprise, she swam all the way out to me where I was standing thigh-deep in cool water. I washed all the blood off her body as she gulped water and cooled down in it. Dan joined us before we all went back to our shady tree, cracked a couple of beers and chatted the next few hours away.

We’d both had an entertaining last few weeks it felt so good to catch up, especially with such a pretty lake in front of us. Two beers deep each, we relinquished our tree spot to a family just coming down to the lake and walked back to our cars for lunch. I reversed my car into its spot so that kitchen was in the shade and heated up some sausage leftovers for lunch. We sat out the back of the cars and ate, talking some more while Cleo lay under my car.

An hour or so of that and we were ready to go off and find camp. Our requirement was to find a spot by water since it was so warm so Dan pegged a place just under and hour from where we were at Kachess’s Lake. We both filled up with petrol on the way and I followed Dan onto the traffic-jammed highway until we got onto forest road. Turns out we didn’t need to wind our way through the rutted dirt roads, but Google maps had taken us on an adventure. My car was filled with dust yet again. When we neared the campsite, I kept a look out and as Dan drove on, I noticed a road off to the side that looked like it led down into an empty open space in the forest. He hadn’t seen it and so I drove off after him. When we reached the site we were looking for, the place was full, so I pulled up next to Dan and told him to follow me back to the side road that he hadn’t even seen.

I drove down the road, hopeful and the site below us was completely free, but the road heading down into it looked a little gnarly. Once Dan parked up behind me, he was convinced. The site was right next to a creek with a couple of swimming pools, how perfect! Dan, with his high clearance and big tyres drove down the road first and made easy work of it so I followed. What a sweet spot! Dan was impressed with my camp finding skills.

After levelling up our vans, we went straight down to the creek, got naked and had a swim. The water was cold, but not glacier cold. We explored around the creek a bit for a good hour before retreated back to camp where we got our chairs out and hung out. Neither of us were too hungry for dinner so we just relaxed in our beautiful spot before Dan whipped up a salad and I cracked the bottle of wine I’d bought to celebrate our reunion. Fittingly, the wine was called “Riunion” and it was bloody delicious! The first red wine I’d liked from the first sip.

We got some entertainment when the people at the next campsite over navigated the road out with a loaded trail behind. He got bogged a couple of times in a divet but got himself out after a few tries. They let us know that they’d vacated a sweet camp spot if we wanted to take it over. We went over for a look but it was a poky little site so we fancied ours better. We sat around talking until the sun went down and retired into Dan’s van after a good shakeout of the sheets. Together again, it was great to be back in the Cabana with Cleo in the driver’s seat on lookout.