Crowds of shoppers lined up in front of Walmart and Target to take advantage of sales on what has become the biggest shopping day of the year.
Some stores opened hours before midnight on Thursday.
Another sign of a strong Black Friday was the ammount of packaging left by Canadian shoppers in an effort to avoid paying duty fees at the border.
Ken Oplinger with the Bellingham/Whatcom Chamber of Commerce says Canadian Traffic at the border was very heavy on Friday.
Oplinger says he predicts that local retail sales over the holiday season will be six percent higher than last year.
Nationally, retail sales over the four day holiday weekend were up about 12.8 percent over the same period last year according to the national retail federation.
They say overall spending for the weekend rose to just over $59 billion from $52.4 billion, with the average shopper spending $423.
