Hello! We crossed the 1000 Islands Bridge border on September 11, 2011. We told the guard that my "friend" was coming to visit my roommate and I for a month. We were engaged at the time and were asked questions like how did we know each other, what was our relationship, what we will be doing ect. We had the car packed with stuff like a computer, 2 monitors, clothes, kitchen stuff. We said we were friends who met on World of Warcraft. The guard asked why he would need house ware and cooking stuff if he was just visiting and he said he liked to cook and planned on cooking most of the meals (he's only cooked 3 meals since he's been here.) My "friend" only had his passport card and not a full passport as we were still waiting for it to be mailed to my address. The guard didn't scan his passport card or my passport, he just stood there holding them. After he got finished asking those couple of questions, he handed back our stuff, told us to have a nice day and waved us through. The whole process took about 10 minutes, if that. I thought we would be more scrutinized since we thought security would be really tight due to it being September 11, but it wasn't. We even stopped by duty free 15 minutes before going through the border and loaded up with way more smokes than we should have been allowed to cross with. We had 4 cartons each laying out in plain view and nothing was said. From my experience the 1000 Islands Bridge is one of the best ones to cross, even for day shopping in the States. It's not busy and the guards there are super friendly. My family and I have been crossing there for about 30 years now and never once been stopped to get checked out. You tend to get waived through if you have your receipts in hand when asked if you have anything to declare.
