Campbell Valley Regional Park Trailblazer hike

We are indeed international hikers. 

Every once in awhile we go across the border into British Columbia, Canada to hike. Thursday we went to Campbell Valley Regional Park. We went there before in November of 2013. You can read about that very cold hike here. 

This week's hike was much warmer (mid 50's) and just a slight sprinkle off and on.
11 of us carpooled for our journey into another country for our hike.

New "early" leaf growth

A very high bridge railing

 

Packs at rest, for our lunch break

An unusual tree

Our great hiking day ended with an exclamation point!

We were asked at the Border crossing coming back in to the United States:

 "What were we doing in Canada?" 

Pat (our fearless) leader replied, "We were hiking". 

The customs agent said,  "Aren't there any trails in the U.S. that you could have hiked on?"

Pat then replied, "We occasionally enjoy coming to Canada to hike"

The agent then replied, "Why aren't your clothes wet?" 

*note - it was raining quite hard at the time we were at the border crossing.

To which Pat replied, "It hadn't been raining enough for us to get wet."

The agent then asked us what were we bringing back in to the United States, a fellow hiker in the back seat replied, "oh only a little mud".

The agent quickly said, "turn off your car and unlock the trunk."

He then proceeded to go through our packs that were stowed there. Finding nothing of interest, he gave us our identification information and let us go. Whew....

Upon arriving back at the Senior Center in Bellingham, we asked the other drivers of the cars in our caravan how their crossing went. They all replied that they were asked "if they had been hiking why weren't there clothes wet. They however weren't searched. 

Lesson learned by our quippy back seat hiker, don't try to be funny. 

Border crossing agents don't have a sense of humor.

I trusted Pat for our distance. We hiked about 5 1/2 miles mostly flat, with about 164 feet of elevation gain. 

I use my iPhone & the endomondo app to track my activities. Since we were in Canada and I didn't want to pay for *roaming data fees, I turned on "airplane mode".

*note, I'm adding this because I had an aha moment. 

I'm such a silly, I had a lightbulb moment & realized why I can't get my GPS to work when I try in Canada. On my iPhone I've been turning on Airplane mode instead of turning off data. Oops, apparently I didn't understand the difference. Hurray for me though, I'm happy to discover my brain still works.