Quote:
Originally Posted by MonctonRad
I think fewer and fewer people are routinely crossing the border all the time, especially when compared to pre-911. There are a variety of reasons for this, but the thickening of the border certainly accounts for a lot.
If it is not easy, convenient and enjoyable, , then people will tend not to do it.
I live 2.5 hours from the border, and four hours from the nearest medium sized American city (Bangor ME). Back in the 90s, we would go down there for a fun weekend and for a shopping trip. You could easily get there on a Friday evening, and have Saturday and most of Sunday to shop and explore. Things have changed. Shopping in Bangor has collapsed (post 911) due to the disappearance of Canadian retail tourism. Shopping in Moncton in fact is now infinitely better than in Bangor. The border is thickened. Gas is more expensive (hotels too). There is very little you can do down there that you can't do here now. The question become "why bother???"
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we cross about every other weekend, crosssing is so easy, lineups are never worse than 20 minutes sometimes there are no lineups, the border guy asks us why we are going and ushers us in, coming back into Canada is also easy, usually no more than 5 minutes, granted we time it to come back after 10 pm, but easy, and gas out here on the US side works out to be 1.30 per litre compared to the 1.90 - 2.00 we pay in Vancouver area. So well worth filling up. We're lucky here compared to other places in Canada as far as we are very close and have a lot within 20 minutes of crossing.
Bellingham is a small town, 80,000 I think, but it has all the big US stores like Hobby Lobby, TJ Maxx, Marshalls, Ross, Sierra, Homegoods, Target, Trader Joes, AtHome, REI, Whole Foods, Macys, Kohls, Big Lots etc. There is a grocery store called Winco that is very cheap considering, meat can be very cheap and cheese and 60 eggs go for $7 (USD) Seattle is about 60-90 minutes more, and makes for an easy day trip, we don't go that far that often but a couple times a year maybe.