Silicon-

You bring up an interesting point about duty-free. In fact, after our Vancouver nightmare, we were given two tips that would have made it much easier to enter the USA from Canada (nice info, but too late for us!):

(1) When driving towards the US border in Canada, look for the truck crossing signs. Trucks are directed off of the main highway to a separate crossing a few miles away. Supposedly this costs about 15 minutes of extra driving, but saves time overall because cars can cross at this point with very little wait.

(2) Sometimes using duty free at the main crossings make it much quicker - even if you only purchase a bottle of water or a candy bar. To make a long story short - the line to enter the USA with a duty-free purchase is usually much faster than the non-duty-free line, simply because of the way the road is laid out and the configuration of the duty-free area (at this location, anyway). The kicker is that it is absolutely illegal to use this line WITHOUT making a purchase - the Canadian officials will make you turn around and go to the back of the "regular" line. Hence the need for a quick purchase of *something*... Again, great idea...wish we would have known .