MinnieMomMe
Earning My Ears
- Joined
- Aug 11, 2011
- Messages
- 61
We are back from our amazing Alaskan cruise! I wanted to update you on how the one way rental and border crossing went. On a side note, the cruise was incredible, possibly the best vacation we've ever taken!
We were worried about renting from Avis on Hornby as their reviews were mediocre to poor, mostly due to wait times. Therefore we opted to do early walk-off with our luggage on departure day. They started letting us off the Wonder around 7:40am. We sped through customs and grabbed a cab to take us the few blocks to Avis. We got there about 8:15am and only had one person ahead of us. We reserved a van but it was recalled due to safety issues so we were upgraded to a really nice Chevy Suburban! The whole process took a fair amount of time so we were glad we got off the ship quickly as there were a good five people waiting in line after us by the time we got done. We were on the road by 9am.
We decided to cross the border at Blaine which is about an hour away from Vancouver. There are two border crossing options at Blaine, Peach Arch and Pacific Hwy, we took Pacific Hwy as the estimated crossing time was shorter and we got through within 15 minutes. Easy-peasy!
At this point I reserved tickets for the Boeing Future of Flight tour in Mukilteo for 3:30pm (earliest I could get). It's a good thing we bought the tickets online as they were sold out for the entire day by the time we arrived at Boeing later that day.
We wanted to try a more leisurely scenic route so we got off the 5 fwy at Bellingham and drove to Fairhaven where we stopped to explore and have a quick break and snack. Super cute town, got Rocket donuts, coffee at Tony's and explored the bookstore.
After our quick break we took Chuckanut highway south which was a really pretty scenic route along Puget Sound. You can't see the water too well but driving through the forested coastline was much nicer than the relatively blah drive of the 5 fwy. There are some pull-outs along the way that you can stop at, but we just drove the whole way, enjoying the view from our luxury Suburban.
We entered into some very pretty farmland on our way to La Connor, our next stop. La Connor is a really quaint seaside town with some cute shops and places to eat. We had lunch at Sliders, that had really great sliders and from what we saw great breakfast and homemade pies served all day, and funny signs decorating their walls.
After lunch and walking around La Connor for a while we headed back toward the 5 fwy to Mukilteo and the Boeing Future of Flight tour. Our 3:30pm reservation turned out to be the perfect time for us. The tour was very interesting and the building housing the manufacturing facility was crazy big (apparently large enough to hold Disneyland). We were done with our tour and back on the road just after 5pm.
We got into Seattle at 6pm. Our hotel, the Westin, is literally across the street from Avis so that was pretty perfect too. DH dropped the kids and I off at the hotel then went to the return the car. The only hiccup was we forgot to fill the car up with gas before returning it. We were going to pay the gas fee but it turns out they charge you triple gas prices so we took their recommendation and DH went back out to top off the tank. That saved us about $100! The only other tricky thing is Seattle has a ton of one-way streets so it's not very easy to drive if you're not familiar with it. Our hotel was in a great location and we didn't need a car at all for our short visit.
We were checked in by 6:30pm and grabbed a pizza dinner at Serious Pie (another great meal) around the corner from the Westin.
In closing, I'm really glad we drove from Vancouver to Seattle. The train option was really too late in the day, getting us into Seattle after 10pm. I'm sure the train ride is beautiful (we drove by the tracks along Chuckanut hwy), but we would have had to find somewhere to store our luggage in Vancouver and probably sit around the train station for a good portion of the day waiting for our train. The drive was a fun adventure and we got to see and experience some really cool places between Vancouver and Seattle.
We were worried about renting from Avis on Hornby as their reviews were mediocre to poor, mostly due to wait times. Therefore we opted to do early walk-off with our luggage on departure day. They started letting us off the Wonder around 7:40am. We sped through customs and grabbed a cab to take us the few blocks to Avis. We got there about 8:15am and only had one person ahead of us. We reserved a van but it was recalled due to safety issues so we were upgraded to a really nice Chevy Suburban! The whole process took a fair amount of time so we were glad we got off the ship quickly as there were a good five people waiting in line after us by the time we got done. We were on the road by 9am.
We decided to cross the border at Blaine which is about an hour away from Vancouver. There are two border crossing options at Blaine, Peach Arch and Pacific Hwy, we took Pacific Hwy as the estimated crossing time was shorter and we got through within 15 minutes. Easy-peasy!
At this point I reserved tickets for the Boeing Future of Flight tour in Mukilteo for 3:30pm (earliest I could get). It's a good thing we bought the tickets online as they were sold out for the entire day by the time we arrived at Boeing later that day.
We wanted to try a more leisurely scenic route so we got off the 5 fwy at Bellingham and drove to Fairhaven where we stopped to explore and have a quick break and snack. Super cute town, got Rocket donuts, coffee at Tony's and explored the bookstore.
After our quick break we took Chuckanut highway south which was a really pretty scenic route along Puget Sound. You can't see the water too well but driving through the forested coastline was much nicer than the relatively blah drive of the 5 fwy. There are some pull-outs along the way that you can stop at, but we just drove the whole way, enjoying the view from our luxury Suburban.
We entered into some very pretty farmland on our way to La Connor, our next stop. La Connor is a really quaint seaside town with some cute shops and places to eat. We had lunch at Sliders, that had really great sliders and from what we saw great breakfast and homemade pies served all day, and funny signs decorating their walls.
After lunch and walking around La Connor for a while we headed back toward the 5 fwy to Mukilteo and the Boeing Future of Flight tour. Our 3:30pm reservation turned out to be the perfect time for us. The tour was very interesting and the building housing the manufacturing facility was crazy big (apparently large enough to hold Disneyland). We were done with our tour and back on the road just after 5pm.
We got into Seattle at 6pm. Our hotel, the Westin, is literally across the street from Avis so that was pretty perfect too. DH dropped the kids and I off at the hotel then went to the return the car. The only hiccup was we forgot to fill the car up with gas before returning it. We were going to pay the gas fee but it turns out they charge you triple gas prices so we took their recommendation and DH went back out to top off the tank. That saved us about $100! The only other tricky thing is Seattle has a ton of one-way streets so it's not very easy to drive if you're not familiar with it. Our hotel was in a great location and we didn't need a car at all for our short visit.
We were checked in by 6:30pm and grabbed a pizza dinner at Serious Pie (another great meal) around the corner from the Westin.
In closing, I'm really glad we drove from Vancouver to Seattle. The train option was really too late in the day, getting us into Seattle after 10pm. I'm sure the train ride is beautiful (we drove by the tracks along Chuckanut hwy), but we would have had to find somewhere to store our luggage in Vancouver and probably sit around the train station for a good portion of the day waiting for our train. The drive was a fun adventure and we got to see and experience some really cool places between Vancouver and Seattle.
