Canada....and Back

View from Split Rock Light house

Friends, few weeks back, I had an adventurous trip to Canada and back to US. Note: DO NOT TRY IT.

I and one crazier guy were thinking where to go on weekend midnight. After lot of checking and thinking, we agreed to visit Duluth. Point to note is, I am living in Minnesota (U.S.A.) which is a border state to Ontario (Canada). The border city is Duluth. Our plan was to reach there early morning and take rest for some time before exploring Duluth. So we reached early morning and were looking for a silent place to sleep. We passed from a place where lots of Cops were there due to some issue going on. As soon as we passed, one cop caught us, courtesy of my crazy friend, he was about to hit a curb and cop saw that. He was a good guy, he left us just like that.

Light House

We roamed around the area for some time and parked our car to have some sleep. Morning, we got fresh and walked along side Superior lake. It's the largest lake of North America, it’s so big, that they should rename it as ocean. Well the walk, bridges and all were good but we were not able to enjoy the fall color as its still weeks for that.

Next we moved to the Light house. It’s good to visit the light house if you want to enjoy history as well as beautiful area near the lake. Split rock Lighthouse is one of the picturesque lighthouse of US. It was built after a famous storm in which 29 ships were lost. Until 1969 before retiring, it played a very good role of guiding ships at lake. Now we were feeling damn hungry, so we started looking for some lunch. Unfortunately the only veggie-Subway was closed due to Labor Day, so we managed with DQ.

Boat for display @ Duluth

Now, we would have seen Gooseberry falls but we were more interested in adding a Country to our list. Hence we continued our journey towards border.  The most hilarious thing about Canada-US border was that there is no proper border. Until you have already stepped foot inside Canada. We just wanted to see border from a distance, but we never knew when we have crossed US. There is just a one way bridge and as soon as you cross it, you will be in Canada. Now you have to pass immigration to enter in any country. There was a car line ahead of us who were going for immigration check. We didn’t had any plans/passport/visa to enter Canada, so we planned to pull into a side parking and take a U turn. Shit happens and it happened-that lot was inside Canada. You have to cross a truck line to reach there, we didn’t knew that it was a truck line.

Morning @ Duluth

Siren started buzzing and Canada Border patrol came rushing towards us. They were the one who confirmed us, that we are actually in Canada and now we had to go through Immigration. We explained them our situation. The guy who caught was a good guy, he asked us to sit and wait for immigration officer call. We were slight tensed, actually waiting for the unknown was killing us. We didn’t know what’s going to happen as it was the first unknown border crossing. Soon the same guy called us and guided us to sign a paper. It said that we are withdrawing our visa application which we never applied. Instead we entered.

Welcome to Ontario

He explained us that it’s the best and fastest way to get out of Canada. He was such a good guy, that he even called America and informed them about our commencing. So, American immigration will not question much. We thanked him and came back to America. As expected, they also asked us to pull our car side and enter for immigration check. We explained them the situation and they checked our identities. Soon they were able to grasp it and informed us not to do it again. Sometimes border patrol may not be able to identify us especially without passports. Hence it’s good to avoid such situations.

Finally, we were back in our home country-America. Sounds funny, still true in certain ways.

Then we headed towards our home in Minneapolis with a pizza break on the way.

PS: Let me know, if you wanna see a video of me entering Canada, it would be risky to post here.