Walking to America

The other day, I needed to visit my mail box in Port Angeles, Washington (I'll talk about US mail boxes in a future blog post).

So I grabbed my electronic time-killers, walked down to the Inner Harbour, got a ticket for the 9:45am sailing of the Victoria Express, walked directly onto the ship, and about an hour and fifteen minutes later (it was really foggy!) I walked off the ship, through Customs and into the town of Port Angeles. Since I didn't have much time to catch the ferry going back, I walked straight up to 8th street (guess how many blocks that is from the dock! Just guess!) to the UPS store, got my stuff, mailed some back, walked back to the boat and left the country. Just like that. An hour later I was back in Victoria, walking home. Total time gone: less than four hours.

I know a lot of people live near international borders and do this sort of thing all the time; many don't even need a car (though I think this is the first time I've crossed a border completely without the aid of an automobile). But I have to say I think it's kind of cool to be able to visit another country and come back, spontaneously* as a (short!) day trip.

*Depending on the schedules of the boats that day, of course.