Day 26 – On the Road Again

It was nice to be riding in a car that I was able to control. I do enjoy driving from time to time, and this stretch of Canada was a great break from my current routine. But I've gotta say, it feels great to be back on the road again, doing things the thumbing way.

I should let you know something, too: I've gotten rather behind on these. The next 25 days worth of posts are being written well after the fact, and so I'm not putting too much thought into them. I apologize for that. Hopefully I'll do better in the coming weeks.

But back onto the people I met. I'll be brief, though. I got a ride from a soldier first. Quite a cool guy, he'd also done a turn or two up in Alaska. Funny the connections you make. The next ride I had also gave me my first chance to experience car trouble: We made it halfway to Missoula, then the car overheated. We pulled over, and found that the coolant tank was completely empty, and that AAA didn't have anyone that could deal with it till Monday. That ended that ride. I went off to the road, and they headed to a hotel. It's rather sad...they were headed out to South Dakota to Jewel Cave, for a quick vacation. This is a reason why I like hitchhiking: no worries about maintenance.

My final ride was from an awesome couple in a travel van. I sat in the back seat/couch, plugged in my phone to the outlet, and just had a great time. These things sound awesome! Perfect for two people to travel around in, as you can use it to cook, clean, closet, and crash...in comfort.

It was nice to hit Missoula, though. Especially after I sat in McDonalds and found a CSer to stay with!

Day 23-25 – Ridesharing to the US

 Back to the lower 48! Now, this trip is primarily about hitchhiking, but Alaska did take a serious amount of time to get to. For that reason, I decided that exceptions could be made, so long as they don't cost any more than hitchhiking. I did some searching on Craigslist rideshares, and I found the perfection solution: a woman was moving down from Alaska to Oregon, and needed a second driver to help get her through Canada! She wanted to do it as quickly as possible, so with two drivers we'd be able to make it all the way down in only two days.

Granted, that's not quite what happened. We met up in Tok, AK, at about midnight. I decided to try something I'd never used before: a 5 hour energy. I drove all night, learning that Canadians shut down their gas pumps after a certain hour, and then you're stuck. I think it has to do with the fact that many of them run on generators. We were lucky, though. We had enough gas to get to a casino, where they did keep the pumps up 24 hours. I drove us the rest of the evening, getting to the Destruction Bay gas station right as it opened the following day.

I'm getting off track. I said we would do it in two days, switching off drivers. But we didn't. My copilot, Cheryl, unfortunately fell ill that first day. She had a hacking cough, worsened by the close proximity of her cat in the car. It would have been very unsafe to drive in such a condition, so I took over, driving almost the entire distance. I might have still tried for the 2 day time frame, (more 5 hours), but it was decided that sleeping in a real bed would probably be much healthier for her. And so we did. Hooray for awesome couchsurfers in Edmonton and a repeat at the hostel I stayed in before :)

Overall, the trip went well. I don't think I'll use another rideshare on this trip (I do prefer hitchhiking for my current purposes), but it's definitely something I would recommend and will use in the future!