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!