Hi Courtney

Lie blatantly. Tell them you're going for a week, tell them exactly which park you'll be staying at, give an address of a friend you're going to visit on the way (well, maybe don't make this one up completely). When I told those folks I was going to camp my way across the country in national parks for a couple of months they tore my van apart and held me for about 3 hours. I'd like to include here a few comments about how the skin colour distribution in the questioning office seemed "a little" different than the skin colour distribution in the North American population at large, but I think that would be out of place here.

A contrasting story: when I was headed to San Francisco (of all places!) to give a paper at a conference, I had my conference registration and hotel reservations printed out and easily accessible, and had no problems despite having a van jammed full of boxes and bicycles (I was moving from west to east Canada via that conference).

Lessons learned: Provide details, and don't mention any "unconventional" behaviour. Customs folks are accustomed (yep) to people crossing the border for short trips to shop, visit tourist destinations, and stay in hotels.

Furthermore, I second the earlier comments about erring on the safe side when it comes to joking with customs agents. Canadian ones aren't great, but I am certain that American customs agents are The Most Humourless Beings on Earth.

Safe travels to you. I'm jealous of your upcoming months of happy van living.

Graham

PS Don't forget your premium CAA coverage!

On 2011-12-11, at 8:00 AM, Automatic digest processor wrote:

> Date:    Sat, 10 Dec 2011 21:39:21 -0500
> From:    JordanVw@AOL.COM
> Subject: Re: What do you say to the customs guys when heading South??
> 
> In a message dated 12/10/2011 1:07:36 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
> courtneyhook@SHAW.CA writes:
> 
> Whenever  I go to the states for a weekend or a week, they always ask us
> where we'll be  going , itinerary, and even what hotels we've got booked etc.
> I have never  done an extended stay in the States, like say 3 months on the
> road. What do  you say to the customs guys when you're going to be a nomad
> in a 77 Westy, and  don't really know where you're going to be for timelines
> etc? Will they expect  an itinerary and all that stuff? I'm kind of
> wondering about  this??
> Thanks,
> Courtney