LikePoint Roberts
Tuesday, April 6th, 2010
Over the weekend we had to renew Nat’s working holiday permit as we’re coming up to having been here for two years. The line ups at the main border crossing, Peace Arch, south of Vancouver, are usually hideous on long weekends, so this being the Easter weekend we decided to visit the geographical oddity that is Point Roberts.
South of Tsawassen, which is south of Vancouver, Point Roberts is a peninsula under USA rule that is not actually attached to the US mainland. If a resident of Point Bob wanted to get to Seattle by car, they would have to drive over the Canadian border, along to the Peace Arch crossing, then south from there.
PB was created in the 1846 treaty between the then British government of the Canadian region and the Yank government when they decided to cut north America up along the 49th paralell. You can read up on it on wikipedia, but basically after the fact they realized that there was a little bit seperated from the mainland in the west coast. Oops.
Here’s some pics from our trip down there:
Actually, I lied. I didn’t take any pics as it was boring as hell. We drove around for about 20 minutes before realising it was almost a ghost town and we probably weren’t going to find somewhere interesting for dinner. Their main industries seem to be gas (petrol) and post boxes, catering for Canadians coming down for cheap gas and to avoid costly cross borders shipping prices.
It’s supposed to be quite pretty during the summer, and I can see that, but on a spring afternoon, you could see the tumbleweeds rolling across the road.
Where is the benefit for traveling Aussies on a WHP? The Canadian border post there is a full service crossing, and the very short border wait times make it a great place to renew your work permit if you have a car to get down there and don’t want to frig around with the real border.
some of it even rises up out of the ground in interesting formations.
