At the crack of dawn (5:00 AM) we were up getting ready to head to Bremerton, Washington to pick up our new motorcycle. At 6:15, the cloudy sky was beautiful with the sun poking through the mountains and I was wishing that I was stationary somewhere taking pictures. Our unhindered drive had us arriving at our pick-up destination at 10:30 AM and that included waiting 25 minutes for the Kingston ferry in Edmonds, Washington; pretty good timing. By the time Rick had the bike safely strapped on the trailer, the overcast skies had cleared and the sun was shining brightly warming things up nicely.

We had to be back at the US customs office in Sumas by 4:00 PM and we had one very important stop to make first; Trader Joe’s, our favourite grocery store in the USA. Luckily there was one on the route back without having to make any side-trips giving us time to load up on all of our favourite goodies. We were in heaven the minute we walked in the door and in a very short time we had filled a shopping cart with cereal, nuts, spaghetti sauce, cookies and capers; just some of the things we like the most. Unless you’ve been to Trader Joe’s it would be difficult to fully understand our enthusiasm, but they have the best granola (and this coming from someone who makes a pretty awesome one of her own!), roasted nuts, organic vodka sauce and cookies anywhere.

Once we arrived in Sumas we went through the importing process with no problems at all and we even declared our groceries. Altogether the import fee and GST came to less than $700, we were back in Mission by 5:00 PM and they didn’t charge us duty on the groceries either! An awesome day!