Boundary

Gas in Canada is expensive! It’s a bit deceiving because on the signs it’s listed as 119.  But the thing is, that’s $1.19 per litre. And a litre is much much less than a gallon.  We won’t do too much math here, but I’ll explain that to fill up our tank in the lower 48 this summer it took about $45. As we drove through Canada, we found that we were spending nearly $60 to fill up our tank.  Dawson City was our last stop in Canada before we crossed back into the US. To fill up our tank there would have been $72!  But the border was just 56 miles away. And 4 miles past the border was a town called Boundary that was listed in our travel guide as having a gas station.

“It has got to be cheaper back in the US” we said to each other. Nevermind that Kyle’s Jeep said he only had 65 miles to go on this tank. Boundary was at 60 miles.  “We can make it to Boundary,” we said to each other.

As we climbed up the highway to the border crossing we kept checking the gauges.  We knew it was going to be tight, but when we finally got to the border crossing, we still had another 10 miles we could go on that tank (we had coasted some). We breathed a sigh of relief and headed down to Boundary.

“Is this it?” Kyle asked, looking at the 1950s style gas pumps to our left.

“Oh crap!” I said as I looked at the pumps and the building more closely. “It’s boarded up!!!  The next town is 48 miles away.”

Kicking ourselves, we drove back up to the US-Canada border. Kyle went up to the US Border Agent, and explained our situation.

“Phew,” I breathed a huge sigh of relief as I saw Kyle walking back to the car with a red gas caniser. The friendly border agent had sold us 5 gallons for a mere 20 dollars.  And with a little bit of math, you can quickly figure out that that is $4/gallon, which to fill up the entire tank of the Jeep, would have been a full $72.  Shoot, I guess we miscalcuated that one.