Battling Customs and AT&T

Made it to the Ferry on time, and had a really smooth sail across to Port Angeles, without the rolling motion that is normal on the Coho. The tradition on our trips is that Doreen gets her picture taken on the outside deck of the ferry. One nice thing about the Coho is that they allow dogs on the passenger deck in the main cabin. I learned this just the other day while looking at the Coho website.

 

Our trouble started on the other side, where for the second time in a row, the US Customs pulled us aside and search Miss Travelaire inside and out - every compartment, cupboard and drawer. Just like the last time, they found nothing of interest. You'd think they would give up. In fact, both times, I think they searched every RV on the ferry, so they weren't really picking just on us.

We started out, after the Customs let us free, and travelled down to a place called Silverdale, where there was an AT&T store. The first order of business on the trip was to try to get some prepaid data time from AT&T for our iPad, so we can be connected to the internet without visiting every Starbucks, MacDonald's, and Safeway along the way in order to get a WiFi connection.

AT&T doesn't like Canadians. They won't accept Canadian credit cards, or Canadian addresses. And of course they won't accept real money (which I always though was illegal!) So, before we left, I searched it out on the internet, and found that the consensus of the online forms is that you buy a Visa Gift Card (a $100 card cost $106) from a place like Target. These cards can be used wherever a Visa or Mastercard credit card can be used, and they have no name attached to them. Then you just use any American address, for your billing address (I used the address of the AT&T store). They guy in the AT&T store didn't know what he was doing, but with the help of two or three others, eureka! it worked - I got 30 days of internet time for $30. I went out very happy that I had an AT&T account with 30 days of data. But that was short lived, because when I got back to the motorhome I found I still had no AT&T connection. Back to the store I went, where they told me Oh, it will take about an hour before it will start working. Well, it turned out it never worked - that's why I couldn't update my blog last night.

The next order of business was to check the torque on the wheel nuts of the motorhome, which I did out in the parking lot of the mall where the AT&T store was. After getting new tires, the wheel nuts have to be checked within the first 150km. Kal Tire would have done this for free, but Kal Tire doesn't have any stores in the USA. This is a fairly laborious job, because taking the hubcaps off is a bit of a pain. On we went after this procedure, to the town of Shelton, WA. We didn't really intend to go that way; we intended to go through Tacoma. But I made a wrong turn along the way, and then the GPS lady took us down this route. But that was fine, because there was a Super Walmart store there where we camped in the parking lot for the night. It was getting near dark by this time. We spent over $60 here in this store - pretty steep price for a campsite!