We have arrived at the Sweet Grass Canadian border.
Hello.
Morning.
Thank you.
Just yourself in there?
Just me and my dog.
All right.
Where do you live?
I live in my RV.
I'm all over the place.
But my permanent address is in Livingston, Texas.
All right.
Where you headed to?
Alaska.
I bet you get a lot of that lately.
We do.
Anything you plan to leave in Canada?
Anything I plan to leave?
Yeah.
In Canada.
Nope.
Any alcohol or tobacco?
Nope.
Firearms or weapons?
No sir.
All right.
Have a safe trip.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
Take care.
Alrighty.
We're through.
That was easy.
All right.
There was a sign, by the way, that says "Everybody must declare any cannabis."
Because in some areas in the States, it is legal, and so even though it's legal, I believe,
in Canada.
I think in all of Canada.
Federally, in the United States, it is not legal.
So I'm sure that's part of the reason.
And probably also some kind of laws having to do with bringing substances like that across
a border and declaring all of that stuff.
So, anyways.
Oh, look, it says "Welcome to Alberta."
One thing I love about Anytime Fitness is that they are even in Canada.
So, I found an Anytime Fitness over here and took a shower.
Did my hair, put on a little makeup.
I feel clean.
It's over in this building that's actually kind of right around the corner.
One thing I love about, also, the Anytime Fitness, is not only are they global, but
the showers are amazing.
You get your own shower stall.
It's not like a locker room style.
It's more like a bathroom at your home.
You get a sink, a toilet, a shower.
Sometimes a little changing area.
It's really nice.
And hooks and stuff to hang your towels and your toiletries and everything on.
It's really, really nice.
And some of them, too, also have the handicap bench seat in it if you need something like
that.
So that's always a plus, too.
But yeah.
It was really nice.
All right.
It is 3:20 and I am off to find something to eat.
I'm starving.
I'm going to stay at Cabela's tonight.
There's a Canadian Tire right next door to it, and Canadian Tire, if you don't know this,
has really good internet, WiFi, you can get from the parking lot.
So we're going to do that since I don't have good internet connection with my hotspots.
We'll talk about that in a little bit.
Okay.
See you on the road.
So today was an amazing day actually crossing the border.
I feel like it's been a long time coming because the last several months I've been getting
everything prepared for the van.
All my van mods that I did in California, all the way from Southern California to Northern
California.
And I'll post the link right over here that shows all of the van mods that I did in order
to get prepared.
I did the grill guard, I did some under hood stuff, and I also made sure that I got a spare
tire, because I am going to Alaska.
You never know what can happen.
And there are some areas of Canada that you just don't have cell service in and so, I
don't necessarily think that I can actually change the tire.
I probably should figure that out.
But I haven't.
When I came into Alberta, Canada, I had heard about how bad the gas prices are.
Maybe they're going to get worse as I get further north, but it wasn't too bad at the
one place that I stopped at.
So this was in ... I have my receipt here ... this was in Clareshome, Alberta.
Not too far from the border, maybe 45 minutes from the US border, Canadian border.
And it was a total of $66.87.
It was $1.16 per liter.
And the $66.87 is Canadian dollars, by the way.
I figured it all out, i did the conversion.
There's 3.79 liters to one gallon, so there's 15.22 gallons.
I had a total of almost 58 liters.
It was $1.15 per liter Canadian.
All that said to say it came out to a total of $49.82 USD.
The Canadian dollar is trading at about $1.34 right now.
And that came out to $3.27 per gallon.
Now, that's not really bad, actually.
There's places in California that were worse than that.
I was pleased with that.
We'll see how it gets as I move further north, I have a feeling it's going to get a little
worse.
And I'm going to be interested to see what it's like in Alaska, because Alaska of course,
there's tons of oil up there.
And I believe there's quite a few refineries.
So it will be interesting to see how much the gas prices are there.
But anyway, so that's that.
Now that I'm in Canada, I actually need to start planning my trip.
So I have the Milepost, I don't know if you guys have ever seen this.
This is the 2019 version.
They come out with this every year.
I don't know how much it changes.
I can't imagine that it changes that much from year to year except maybe the advertisement
in here, because there's a lot of ads for places to go and things to do and stuff.
But it's pretty comprehensive.
And you can get this online, too.
But the purpose, I think, is that there's a lot of places you don't have cell service,
and it's better to have something in a book to plan everything out.
And if I had someone here with me, they could look at this while I was driving or vice versa.
Unfortunately I don't have that, so I have to kind of do it on my own ahead of time.
So I'm going to start planning this out.
I know you guys have some places that people have already told me about, on my Facebook
page, that they would like for me to go to.
So leave me a comment below if there's any other place that you want me to go, things
that you want me to visit.so I'm thinking about doing a water cruise, just a small little
day one.
And one of the float planes, I think that's what they're called.
A float plane.
I'm really excited and I can't wait to show you guys what I'm seeing, too.
So one of the other things about going through Canada as far as cell service is concerned
is that neither of my hotspots work here.
I have an AT&T hotspot and I have the Verizon prepaid, that's grandfathered in now, that
plan is no longer available.
Neither of those work in Canada, and if I want to pay for the Verizon one to work in
Canada, I can.
There's an international charge.
But I still have my old post pay Verizon account that's like $20 a month, that's attached to
my cellphone bill.
And I haven't canceled that yet for some reason.
Good thing I didn't, because I can use it here.
Now I am capped at 1/2 a gig a day, so I won't be using the internet a lot here in Canada.
But there's a ton of places you can go and hook on to free WiFi.
I'm right next to Canadian Tire, so I actually get a good WiFi signal from them.
And there's all kinds of places around.
Home Depot's like that, too.
But there's going to be places when I get up into Canada Yukon where there's just no
cell service.
So it doesn't matter if you have a Canadian sim card or a US sim card.
It's just not going to work.
Well, this is home for tonight.
We're at Cabela's.
So, interestingly, there's also a Canadian Tire right here just on the other side of
this fence.
And what's good about that is they have free WiFi.
It comes in really strong.
And I'm parked over here in the RV spots for Cabela's.
They actually have a designated spot.
And they also have ... come on baby.
I've got Lily on the leash over here.
They also have a dump station, which is just right over here.
And you can dump for free, and I think ... let's go check and see if they have potable water.
Let me see.
Come on, Lily.
Well, they do have potable water, but it says out of order.
But here is their dump area.
Lily, stay over here.
Which looks to have a lock on it.
Hmm, that's interesting.
So I guess I will not be dumping my tank over here.
It's kind of weird that they have a lock.
Okay, I've got to turn around because Lily's getting all messed up.
Yeah.
No dumping the tanks over here, apparently.
Usually, that's not the case.
I've been at several Cabela's and they have free rinse water, free potable water, and
free dump.
Well, it's not always free.
I take that back.
Sometimes they do charge you.
There's a little machine that you just pay with your credit card.
Oh, and make sure you comment below if there's some places you want me to go while I'm here
in Alaska or ... not here, when I go to Alaska.
If there's some places that you think I should go, or you want to see, let me know.
I think I'm actually going to do a float plane or something and go around Denali National
Park.
They're kind of prevalent around there.
We'll see.
There's so much to do there.
I'm so excited.
Anyways, leave me a comment below and let me know.
All right.
See you on the road guys, bye.