A letter to one of my publisher's magazines:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: (deleted)
Date: Aug 13, 2005 8:38 AM
Subject: Colunbia River System
To:

Just to let someone know so the word can get spread around that the
U.S. border on the Columbia River system is closed to all boat traffic
since 911.
It has not been well publicized and people are still going down there
expecting to be able to cross the border into the U.S. and run the
Columbia river into Roosevelt lake and down to Grand Coulee Dam.
Two summers ago myself and a friend loaded our boats and drove to
Edgewood on the Lower Arrow lake with the intent of running the Lower
Arrow lake to Keenlyside Dam. At the dam we would enter the locke and
be lower into the Columbia River .From there we would run the river
across the U.S.border and check in at U.S. Customs.We stopped at
Scotty's Marina north of the dam to top up our fuel.The attendant at
the marina suggest we call ahead to the Locke Master at the dam and he
could start flooding the locke for us.This we did. My friend had the
phone number for the U.S. Customs from a previous trip he had made
from Revelstoke to Grand Coulee and gave them a call to give them an
estimated time for our arrival.This was when we were informed that we
could not cross the border by boat.The people who ran the marine were
not even aware of the change.It makes me wonder what would have
happened to us if we had just headed down there without calling ahead.
If you could publish a notice that the border is closed in the Boat
Journal and maybe get some other boating magazines to do the same if
may save someone a lot of money and time.
Thank you