Boarder crossing insanity - CBP gone crazy...
We've been taking a TT across the US/Canada border for years. We have Nexus and are "pre-cleared" for higher security. We always use the Pacific Highway crossing in south Surrey, BC. because it's the closest one. Have been crossing the border for nearly 60 years in total.
I towed our TT down to the border mid-day last Friday by myself as I've often done. We had a Thousand Trails CG a few miles to the south booked for the long weekend and DW was going down after work in her car later in the day. Done it many many times. Easy peasy.
Well, Friday was definitely different. I was mere feet away from the Nexus booth when I got told to head over to the commercial truck lanes. It was still pretty quiet that time of day so no need to go through the commercial area. They were making all RVs go through the commercial area, Nexus or not. Very strange.
RVs were moving at a crawl, 5+ minutes for each one. Turns out that everyone was getting x-rayed. They had a sniffer dog checking RVs and a CBP officer was checking the underside of each RV.
Finally made it through - 2 hours later! That was painful. Good thing I didn't need to pee because they weren't letting anyone get out even to stretch your legs. Our dog needed to go pee though. They were clearly stalling on letting folks through. They had 5 or 6 officers processing each RV and were just standing there at times after finishing before letting you go. Obviously a stalling tactic for some reason.
Odd thing is, they didn't spend much time inside the RVs. Not sure why they did this and haven never seen it before. We do get pulled over once or twice a year to secondary for an inside inspection of our TT but this was very different.
I hate to say it, but what's next, a wall?? :R
I towed our TT down to the border mid-day last Friday by myself as I've often done. We had a Thousand Trails CG a few miles to the south booked for the long weekend and DW was going down after work in her car later in the day. Done it many many times. Easy peasy.
Well, Friday was definitely different. I was mere feet away from the Nexus booth when I got told to head over to the commercial truck lanes. It was still pretty quiet that time of day so no need to go through the commercial area. They were making all RVs go through the commercial area, Nexus or not. Very strange.
RVs were moving at a crawl, 5+ minutes for each one. Turns out that everyone was getting x-rayed. They had a sniffer dog checking RVs and a CBP officer was checking the underside of each RV.
Finally made it through - 2 hours later! That was painful. Good thing I didn't need to pee because they weren't letting anyone get out even to stretch your legs. Our dog needed to go pee though. They were clearly stalling on letting folks through. They had 5 or 6 officers processing each RV and were just standing there at times after finishing before letting you go. Obviously a stalling tactic for some reason.
Odd thing is, they didn't spend much time inside the RVs. Not sure why they did this and haven never seen it before. We do get pulled over once or twice a year to secondary for an inside inspection of our TT but this was very different.
I hate to say it, but what's next, a wall?? :R
