Tuna
Friday 12 April 2024
Wyoming is pretty, real pretty. I expected it to be flatter away from the mountains. There were lots of dry rolling hills, with massive snow-capped mountains just over there. We cruised out of Sheridan, which is a nice country town with wide roads and a good local brewery.
Our first destination today was Casper International Airport, which was a cruisy drive down the I-90 and I-25 (we didn’t see any ghosts, friendly or otherwise). Love the Interstates here, divided dual lane road at 80mph (nearly 130kph). Casper International Airport is also a Port of Entry, which us very handy for those (us!) trying to sort out visa issues.
When we re-entered the USA the CSP (Customs and Border Protection) person told us we could only stay until 10 May. This was in direct contraction to the advice we’d already got, including from CBP at San Francisco Airport. He wasn’t helpful and said we should contact immigration. So, I waited on hold two nights ago for about hours to talk to a CSP person to get advice and sort out our visa issue. They said the we should have our 90 days reset because we had been out of the USA for a reasonable period of time. We just needed to go chat to a CBP person at a ‘Port of Entry’. The one that was on the way for us was Casper.
We spoke to the extremely lovely CBP Officer Dale Letham about our issue. Unfortunately, despite all his he wasn’t able to solve the problem, neither could Frank, the head honcho in Denver. He did recommend we contact USCIS to try to get our visa amended, but from the one-sided conversation it sounded that it would be a long shot. This took over an hour, but we had a great yarn with Officer Letham about what planes come into this small airport (one from Milan was sitting on the tarmac) and that he considered back in the 50’s/60’s to emigrate to Australia (Perth or Darwin). He and his wife were keen, but the in-laws weren’t so they stayed in the US.
We drove through more stunning landscapes but with a huge headwind. When it was the Albatross’ turn to drive, I decided to contact USCIS via their online chat. The person I got was ok, some of the time. She/He failed on many occasions to actually remember what I had already mentioned. However, the outcome of the 1.5-hour online chat was that we can’t change our visa or extend it. The only possible reason for a 10-day extension would be for an emergency, and holidays weren’t considered an emergency. It is very frustrating that the advice we were given even before we left Australia, along with the advice from some CBP people along the way were in direct contradiction to other CBP and USCIS advice.
So, sitting over a beer at a local brewery in Laramie, WY we have decided that we would no longer try to sort out visa issues and leave before our 90 days are up. With that decision made, we need to sort out a few more things.
Flights! An hour and a half later, but with lovely chats to the nice Singapore Airlines man, we had managed to shift our San Francisco to Singapore flights for only an extra AUD $127.
Then we got onto where to stay tomorrow night. It appears that Denver is booked out for the weekend, but did manage to find a nice place in the mountains for a couple of nights.
I’m tired! What a day it has been.