In the red-blooded American tradition of Jack Kerouac and tens of thousands of travelers, hobos, and teenagers, I decided to hitchhike across that sucker- what better way to see another country?
All said and done, I was in Canada for about two weeks. I hitchhiked over 5,000 kilometers with dozens of people, sleeping at hostels, beaches, and in the midst of Rocky Mountains.
When hitchhiking wasn't possible, alternate means were necessary, though only really back in the US- for instance, a military C-17, a Greyhound, an Uber, a few trains, but most importantly, my own two feet.
As for the route, I took a bus from Columbus, OH up to Sudbury, Canada, hitchhiked from Sudbury to Vancouver (the longest leg of the trip and almost entirely along the Trans-Canada Highway), bus from Vancouver to Bellingham (across the border), and hitchhiked from there to Seattle. In Seattle, I caught a bus to Joint Base Lewis McChord and scrambled aboard a military flight, a C-17 cargo plane, to get to Maryland, then used buses and trains to visit my mom in north NJ and finally get "home" to Ohio.
Instead of telling the whole story start to finish, I'll answer questions and dole out some highlights, like a desperate middle school science teacher throwing out cool science facts about meteors hitting earth to recapture his increasingly disinterested audience.
Is it safe?
Is anything in life? If you know how many people died each year strangled by bedsheets and choking on toothpaste, you wouldn't bother getting up, except maybe to get away from the killer bedsheets.
I believe hitchhiking's dangers have been GROSSLY over exaggerated by "the media" and urban legends. While there are dangers, especially for young women, this would've been my fifth time hitchin' rides for any period of time and I've never felt more than mildly uncomfortable in any situation. Be safe, use common sense, and don't be afraid to say no. Also, being a 22-year old military age male is probably very helpful for not being sexually assaulted.
Why did you hitchhike?!
Why not!? It's always been a romantic, very beatnik sort of idea to me, to be able to become this sort of leech on society that feeds off other peoples' hospitality and goodwill to get around. It's cheap, fun, exciting, and you meet strangers that you'd never run into and chat with otherwise. It's also very uncomfortable and disappoints a bit of you each time someone passes you with your thumb up; this little exercise in humility that's very important to experience from time to time.
Hah, this is a good one- well no shit, there I was in the middle of nowhere, one highway north of where I wanted to be in Ignace. You've never heard of Ignace. It's one of those towns you describe by telling someone how close it is to somewhere they know because the only remarkable thing about it is how forgettable it is.What's the craziest thing that happened?
This older couple had just dropped me off- a retired bush pilot and remarkable older lady who was undergoing chemo- and told me if noone picked up me up by 9pm, they had a shed with a rubber floor I could sleep in and one of their sons at a family reunion they were having was Canadian military so we'd get on well. Anyway, off they went after giving me a 2 hour ride from Thunder Bay.
Truck after truck passed my outstretched thumb and entreating sign- "WEST." 7pm, 8pm, 9pm. They didn't return. 10pm. Dusk. This was bear country, and there wasn't really anywhere for me to stealth camp with my hammock except for the woods or an abandoned building. As I was about to walk to a gas station to perform my evening ablutions and such, an RV passed me. This RV was familiar- it was tones of brown with 5 bikes on the back and pulling a Jurassic Park Jeep. I remembered seeing it a few times in the past days. As I'm walking, I look back and see the RV coming back at me.
It pulls across the street by a library and a middle-aged Canadian man- Eric- pokes his head out and asks if I'm an ax hitchhiker- "Not recently," I smiled at him. He nods and tells me to come around the side- after chatting and reassuring himself I was sufficiently un-axe murdery, he has me leave my pack in the Jeep and I climb aboard to meet his family: a wife and two sons, 11 and 13. One son is in love with the idea that they picked up "a homeless Army man."
Talking to Eric and Tessa, I learn that this is the 4th time they've seen me along the side of the road!! "We kept passin' ya, ey, and eventually we were floored you were always somewhere ahead of us! We figured you were moving along really quick to keep ahead of us so that meant you weren't killing people. That shirt you're wearing has a very skin tone color though, so we thought you were shirtless, and sometimes your sign was covering your shorts. You might want to, eh, not try doin' that. But we figured we've seen you 4 times, you're probably safe!"
Thank God for Tess and Eric and their monstrous RV, they let me sleep in their Jeep that night while a furious rainstorm hammered the entire province. They dropped me off in Winnipeg and I ended up seeing them one more time when I left my kindle in their Jeep and they saw me again!\
How do you hitchhike?
Pick a direction- west, towards Florida, away from here- most anything will work. Then, pick a spot. A good spot- somewhere that's the last place to get out of town, people have to go slow, and people can see you. Signs are optional. Props optional. Put on a big smile and stick your thumb out... and wait. :)
Who picked you up?
Everyone! Eric and Tessa, a criminal defense lawyer, two fun gals in a pickup from Sous St. Marie, Dale the truck driver, crazy John the retired railroadman, a carful of Arabs, a small-plane pilot and his photographer, the retired bush pilot, a trainhopping couple from Oregon on a roadtrip, and a bunch more. Most people that picked me up were middle-aged dudes that had hitchhiked themselves, but there were others too! Some just felt bad for me.
Were there other thumbers out there?
Plenty! Summer's the busy season, especially around BC and the Toronto area of Canada, where I saw at least a few dozen, most within 100 miles of each other, However, the middle provinces were mostly empty, but there were loads of cyclists to replace them. Biking across Canada is a thing, turns out. Talking to them was always interesting- one I ran into in west Sous St. Marie (which, aside from Wawa, is where hitchhikers go to die, I hated that place) had a crappy backpack with some flip flops- his backpack and wallet were stolen. He figured he'd swim across the border back to the US "somehow," I never saw him again. Or a French-Canadian dude, Felix, who my ride picked up at 10pm. He was hitchhiking nonstop- what took me about 8 days of leisurely traveling he knocked out in about 72 hours of continuous hitching. The dogs in the car appreciated napping with us.
Where did you sleep?
I couchsurfed a bunch, stayed in a few hostels, slept by the side of a road on a Lake Michigan beach and was almost murdered by mosquito swarms, almost froze to death sleeping in the Rocky Mountains (in BC) with nothing but a poncho liner, and even racked out in the USO of Sea-Tac.
Are you insane?
I'd like to think so, but hitchhiking seems pretty tame to me now. I'd like to trainhop or ride a motorcycle across a continent in the future, just for fun, really! I would recommend hitchhiking to everyone. You just need to be safe, not think too hard, and take the first step before you realize what you're about to do.
Let me know if you have any other questions, I'd love to answer them if you have any!
When hitchhiking wasn't possible, alternate means were necessary, though only really back in the US- for instance, a military C-17, a Greyhound, an Uber, a few trains, but most importantly, my own two feet.
As for the route, I took a bus from Columbus, OH up to Sudbury, Canada, hitchhiked from Sudbury to Vancouver (the longest leg of the trip and almost entirely along the Trans-Canada Highway), bus from Vancouver to Bellingham (across the border), and hitchhiked from there to Seattle. In Seattle, I caught a bus to Joint Base Lewis McChord and scrambled aboard a military flight, a C-17 cargo plane, to get to Maryland, then used buses and trains to visit my mom in north NJ and finally get "home" to Ohio.
 |
| 5,477 kilometers there, 5,230 back. Yes, I did count. Yes, I used kilometers because it's a much more robust number |
Is it safe?
Is anything in life? If you know how many people died each year strangled by bedsheets and choking on toothpaste, you wouldn't bother getting up, except maybe to get away from the killer bedsheets.
 |
| ... seriously? |
Why did you hitchhike?!
Why not!? It's always been a romantic, very beatnik sort of idea to me, to be able to become this sort of leech on society that feeds off other peoples' hospitality and goodwill to get around. It's cheap, fun, exciting, and you meet strangers that you'd never run into and chat with otherwise. It's also very uncomfortable and disappoints a bit of you each time someone passes you with your thumb up; this little exercise in humility that's very important to experience from time to time.
 |
| Some signs at good spots were covered in people wishing each other luck, saying they love Canada, where they're from, F you, the usual. I wrote livin' the dream everytime I could! |
Hah, this is a good one- well no shit, there I was in the middle of nowhere, one highway north of where I wanted to be in Ignace. You've never heard of Ignace. It's one of those towns you describe by telling someone how close it is to somewhere they know because the only remarkable thing about it is how forgettable it is.What's the craziest thing that happened?
This older couple had just dropped me off- a retired bush pilot and remarkable older lady who was undergoing chemo- and told me if noone picked up me up by 9pm, they had a shed with a rubber floor I could sleep in and one of their sons at a family reunion they were having was Canadian military so we'd get on well. Anyway, off they went after giving me a 2 hour ride from Thunder Bay.
Truck after truck passed my outstretched thumb and entreating sign- "WEST." 7pm, 8pm, 9pm. They didn't return. 10pm. Dusk. This was bear country, and there wasn't really anywhere for me to stealth camp with my hammock except for the woods or an abandoned building. As I was about to walk to a gas station to perform my evening ablutions and such, an RV passed me. This RV was familiar- it was tones of brown with 5 bikes on the back and pulling a Jurassic Park Jeep. I remembered seeing it a few times in the past days. As I'm walking, I look back and see the RV coming back at me.
It pulls across the street by a library and a middle-aged Canadian man- Eric- pokes his head out and asks if I'm an ax hitchhiker- "Not recently," I smiled at him. He nods and tells me to come around the side- after chatting and reassuring himself I was sufficiently un-axe murdery, he has me leave my pack in the Jeep and I climb aboard to meet his family: a wife and two sons, 11 and 13. One son is in love with the idea that they picked up "a homeless Army man."
Talking to Eric and Tessa, I learn that this is the 4th time they've seen me along the side of the road!! "We kept passin' ya, ey, and eventually we were floored you were always somewhere ahead of us! We figured you were moving along really quick to keep ahead of us so that meant you weren't killing people. That shirt you're wearing has a very skin tone color though, so we thought you were shirtless, and sometimes your sign was covering your shorts. You might want to, eh, not try doin' that. But we figured we've seen you 4 times, you're probably safe!"
Thank God for Tess and Eric and their monstrous RV, they let me sleep in their Jeep that night while a furious rainstorm hammered the entire province. They dropped me off in Winnipeg and I ended up seeing them one more time when I left my kindle in their Jeep and they saw me again!\
How do you hitchhike?
Pick a direction- west, towards Florida, away from here- most anything will work. Then, pick a spot. A good spot- somewhere that's the last place to get out of town, people have to go slow, and people can see you. Signs are optional. Props optional. Put on a big smile and stick your thumb out... and wait. :)
 |
| My sign! Pretty straightforward, really. |
Who picked you up?
Everyone! Eric and Tessa, a criminal defense lawyer, two fun gals in a pickup from Sous St. Marie, Dale the truck driver, crazy John the retired railroadman, a carful of Arabs, a small-plane pilot and his photographer, the retired bush pilot, a trainhopping couple from Oregon on a roadtrip, and a bunch more. Most people that picked me up were middle-aged dudes that had hitchhiked themselves, but there were others too! Some just felt bad for me.
 |
| Just ordinary people! John had an awesome VW he's converting himself , a software developer and snowboarder... so maybe a little better than a normal ordinary person, actually. |
Were there other thumbers out there?
Plenty! Summer's the busy season, especially around BC and the Toronto area of Canada, where I saw at least a few dozen, most within 100 miles of each other, However, the middle provinces were mostly empty, but there were loads of cyclists to replace them. Biking across Canada is a thing, turns out. Talking to them was always interesting- one I ran into in west Sous St. Marie (which, aside from Wawa, is where hitchhikers go to die, I hated that place) had a crappy backpack with some flip flops- his backpack and wallet were stolen. He figured he'd swim across the border back to the US "somehow," I never saw him again. Or a French-Canadian dude, Felix, who my ride picked up at 10pm. He was hitchhiking nonstop- what took me about 8 days of leisurely traveling he knocked out in about 72 hours of continuous hitching. The dogs in the car appreciated napping with us.
 |
| a canine bluuuuur of excitement and cuddling! |
I couchsurfed a bunch, stayed in a few hostels, slept by the side of a road on a Lake Michigan beach and was almost murdered by mosquito swarms, almost froze to death sleeping in the Rocky Mountains (in BC) with nothing but a poncho liner, and even racked out in the USO of Sea-Tac.
Are you insane?
I'd like to think so, but hitchhiking seems pretty tame to me now. I'd like to trainhop or ride a motorcycle across a continent in the future, just for fun, really! I would recommend hitchhiking to everyone. You just need to be safe, not think too hard, and take the first step before you realize what you're about to do.
Let me know if you have any other questions, I'd love to answer them if you have any!
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