April 9th, Crossing the border.

We were up and about at a decent hour.  No matter how early you get on the road there will always be someone ahead of you.  I swear some of these old guys must leave in the dark.
  Anyway it was a pleasant enough day in Great Falls, but the wind blew most of the day.  We got away with very light traffic, I think some of the people were waiting for the weather up north to clear.  The first bit was fine, but about a half hour out it started to rain and then sleet came down for a while.  It was pretty chilly by the time I got to Shelby where we stopped in and filled with fuel.  While it was still about 20 miles to the border, it is the last place of any size.  Have stopped there many times in the past.
  We got to the border about 10AM and the lines were short, I think we were about #5 in the line we were in.  We got alarmed as it seemed they were pulling over a lot of people or at least giving them a ticket to go inside and settle up duty on their purchases.  In fact it seemed they were only sending on about a third or quarter of the vehicles with no consequences.  Our biggest concern was the set of tires I had to put on the car last week.  We had a nice young fellow and Marg had listed all the alcohol in the unit.  I had 2 bottles of scotch, but she had one of tequila, wine & then we had the part bottles, including one of rum that only had about 2 drinks out of it and 9 cans of beer.  The guy started to write us up to go in and pay the duty on our overage and then said, this is more hassle for you than it's worth, but gave us a lecture about only being entitled to 40 ounces each.  We thanked him and left with a big smile, but no thanks to all our friends who didn't drink up.  LOL
  Funny thing about the weather, as soon as we got a mile over the border, the sun came out and it was clear skies.  By then the unit and the car were filthy from the wet roads, but nice to be in the clear.  We just drove straight thru Lethbridge even though it was quite nice there.  Stopped in Red Deer at Costco for fuel, only $1.15 per litre.  I say only because that is 8 cents less than Calgary or Edm, but still a lot more than Montana.
  Got to Glowing Embers for the night.  This campground is really turning into an undesirable location, its muddy and lots of trashy looking rv's that seem to have been here all winter.  Oh well, its the only one open all year round, so I guess I should just suck it up.