USA - Canada - USA - Canada: all in a day

After reflecting over today I'm not sure if I should consider the first snowfall of the year in Ann Arbor to be considered an omen of some sort or foreshadowing of how our day went today.  It started off with us packing up the car while the snow lightly fell in Ann Arbor.  All three of us were pretty okay with this as we did what we needed to do and got it all done in a short period of time.  We headed to Tim Hortons and were at the border ready to cross in under an hour.  This my friends is where the story of our tired travelers takes a turn for the worse.

After months of researching and filling out forms both Yaron and I felt confident that crossing the border would be a smooth process.  We individually did research on what would be required and ironed out details that we differed on.  What we didn't plan for was the fact that U.S. immigration has the worst website ever and doesn't clearly indicate the difference between taking a commercial automobile across versus taking a personal use automobile across.  We got to the Ambassador Bridge, paid our $5 to cross it and drove into Canada.  When we got to the generally pleasant customs officer he told us that we needed to export our vehicle from the U.S. first and that we'd have to go back over the bridge into the U.S. to do so.  He explained that the signage is actually pretty terrible and many people miss where they need to turn off.  So we head back into our car, drive over the bridge and pay another $5, get lost on the highway and eventually make it back to the U.S. border crossing where we see a sign that says "cargo customs" and turn into that area.  Clearly exporting a personal use car is a 'cargo' issue.  We waited for the lovely chain-link gates to open and then we go see the U.S. custom agent who promptly told us in a loud, mean and terse tone that we did not do what we needed to do and therefore cannot export our car.  To which we went "Huh?"  Apparently in April 2014 they changed their policy and now anyone exporting a car out of the U.S. must use a broker to file forms and get some special number that allows you to export your car.  Nowhere in our research did we find anything that said this.  We emailed our title and info 72 hours before crossing, received the automatic confirmation and assumed everything was hunky-dory.

Soooooo after getting upset at this whole process we got back in our car and went to get on the bridge.  Turns out this is not normal behaviour for people to drive back and forth on the bridge, especially in a bright orange car.  What happens when you do something out of the ordinary?  The customs police in three cop cars pull you over and surround your car.  Then ask both of you to step out and start yelling at you like you've done something horribly wrong.  Thankfully Yaron did most of the talking and sorted everything out, because I was on the verge of crying.  All we wanted to do was go home!  Once they played good cop/bad cop for a bit they let us go and they all piled into their cars and drove away.  We were left to get back in our car, pay the $5 fee again to cross the damn Ambassador Bridge and drove back into Canada where we met with another friendly, but direct customs agent.  We explained the situation and he was nice enough to let us in, but told us we need to figure out the car situation immediately.  We assured him we would and that we'd do it at the buffalo border since it's closer to Toronto.  He approved our entrance into Canada, Lizzys immigration and all of our household goods that we shipped back.  Our car however is still considered to be American property.

Once we got back into the car we started driving and I started crying.  This was not how I had imagined re-entering Canada would be.  Thankfully though Yaron was able to calm me down and we made it all the way to London before stopping for lunch.  We drove close to home and then got stuck in rush hour traffic.  Our 2 hour fiasco at the border delayed our travels and now we were stuck in Toronto's notoriously horrific rush hour traffic.  After sitting in it for a while we texted my dad who gave us directions on how to get out of the mess we were in.  I don't think I've ever been as happy as I was to just pull into my parents driveway and be done with the day.

We were greeted by my parents, my sister and nephew and then Yaron's parents came over to say hello as well.  After such a shitty end to an awesome road trip we were at home, surrounded by our loved ones and happy to be out of the car.

Slight under-counting as we reset some time after the first gas station. ~3400 miles in total 

Thankfully we found a broker that was open to start handling our forms and it looks like everything should be dealt with by mid-week next week.  We still have to travel back to the border and presumably get yelled at by some U.S. custom agents because I really think that's all they know to do, but everything should be handled before we leave for Australia/New Zealand.

We'll try to blog a bit while 'down under', but I don't think it'll be everyday.  We miss all of our friends and family down in California, but we're excited to be taking these next steps in our lives.  Love to all of you and have a great weekend!

Time-lapsed videos:
Day 10: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hm_Btr8K9f8
Day 11: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5rFS4-FJ2M