Day Eighteen Sep 16, 2000 Saturday Vancouver to Seattle It was Saturday morning, and time to get back to the USA and get our act together. From the theft of our backpacks, we had nearly no cash between us, and had to deactivate our Visa and ATM cards. For the next week or so, we were going to have to live off of Dave's AmEx, and our wits. Dave was due to fly out Sunday afternoon, so there was a very small window to get this all done. We got a early start in Vancouver, and headed south to the USA, stopping in Bellingham, Washington, the first major city we encountered. We all sighed with relief when we found a bank that was open Saturday morning (with lobby hours and real tellers!). We advanced money against the AmEx, enough to hold Dave for a work week and Lyn and Jesse for four days. That would get us all home to Florida and our bank and our checkbook. Lyn would have her hands full upon returning home, starting with replacing her drivers license, all the banking, and of course the insurance claim with State-Farm. The toll-free AT&T support informed us that the phone store in Bellingham was closest to Vancouver. We found it and purchased a new cell phone. It was activated on the spot and immediately assigned to Dave's old cell phone number. The guy at the store had even charged the battery and we got a extra earphone in the deal. We didn't miss a beat, only having to reprogram all the numbers into memory. Yes, we stopped for breakfast, then caught "comfort tacos" at the first Jack in the Box we encountered. Whew! Back to life. We were very happy with the service we received from our State-Farm claims center upon returning home. Please consider State-Farm when you purchase personal property insurance. These pictures are on the US / Canada border about five miles east of the freeway. Dave had been to both San Diego and El Paso, and wanted to see how the northern boarder looked in comparison. The border was fairly formal directly adjacent to the freeway border crossing ("the peace gate"), with markers, customs officers, etc. However as you head east, it thins out into a rural farm area. We stopped and took pictures facing west and east. We were on a road in the USA while just across that little ditch was a similar two-lane paved road running across British Columbia. There were no actual cross-overs bridges, in that you would have to jump over the ditch and certainly could not cross it in a regular car.  We all wondered if neighbors knew each other, if kids played across the ditch, if the volunteer fire department was called to cross over and help in an emergency. We still don't know, but it is an interesting question. We arrived in Seattle, and tried to finish up with tourist activities started two weeks previously. We drove by the Boeing plant in Everett  which was closed but where Dave and Jesse had visited in 1997. Also, we stopped for dinner, and arrived in Seattle from the north, taking one more drive around tour. We took the "Underground Seattle" tour, starting in Pioneer Square. It was enjoyable and we can highly recommend it any visitors. It is a basement walking tour, in a portion of Seattle that was once street level but was filled in a hundred or so years ago to alleviate constant flooding problems. The area is now high and dry, but the basement contains the old main street. We returned to the Courtyard by Marriott by the Seattle airport, ending our trip where we started it 16 days ago. Jesse stayed in the room to rest while Lyn and Dave headed out for a quick shopping trip. A lot of small items were lost with the backpacks (aspirin, pens, batteries, and the actual backpacks themselves). We headed out to Target, then over to Wal-Mart, to buy all these various incidentals. We saved the receipts and submitted them State-Farm and were readily reimbursed for all of the purchases. State-Farm treated us very fairly with our insurance claim. Of course it was one more bag of Jack in the Box tacos (to go) and back to the Courtyard. Dave needed to pack his luggage to fly to work Sunday afternoon. Lyn and Jesse would have two more days to enjoy Seattle and would head home to Florida on Tuesday. With Dave packed, we all crashed in bed. The theft of the backpacks was unsettling and caused a lot of anxiety and frustration, but we overcame all those emotions and still enjoyed our last family day together in Seattle. Original Web Upload May 2001 Last Update: July 22, 2001