Blog Day One

The entire trip so far is awesome!  First, we spent about a solid twelve hours driving from Meadow until the border, laughing, talking, wrestling, reading, and looking for places to sleep in a semi-crowded van.
 
It's amazing how hilly the landscape gets the farther south you go. We saw an amazing valley along the way enclosing a large grassy clearing, and a lot of different scenery until we arrived at the border where it started to get interesting. People began whispered jokingly about things not to say around the border police, and some grew visibily agitated about the scrutiny we were about to endure.

I was travelling with Shane in the rental van while the others were in Dale's green van. As we drove to talk to the first border guard the first question was relatively innocent. "Okay sir, what is your name?" The border guard asked and Shane replied calmly, "Shane Schiele." to which the border guard suspiciously began to size him up. "We know some Schieles around here."

The next few moments were somewhat awkward from then on as we were told to go park ahead and wait for further instructions. We pulled ahead and several minutes later we were told to exit the van, bring all the money we had with us and go inside. So we all went inside as Shane was left waiting with the van to be asked more questions while the van was searched.

People began to get frustrated by me by this point because they realized I was legitamately relaxed and cheerful among the stern faced and menacing border guards. I would ask questions to the guards as one by one, the others were detained and asked a variety of questions one on one to make sure everybody's stories matched up. Being one of the last ones chosen to be grilled, I was not at all nervous.

I was brought through a seemingly pointless doorway to a room where there was a grey haired interrogator and a man sitting directly behind, I assume, to analyze my responses, and I assume to make sure I wasn't doing anything suspicious by way of my body language. I was asked what my name was, where we were travelling to, how long we planned on staying, if there were any firearms I knew of inside the van, and if we were planning any side trips. After everything was said and done and I said goodbye to my interrogator, I met up with the rest of the group to watch them giggle nervously, and wait until we were released to continue the rest of the drive to Carlinville.


TO BE CONTINUED ....