— Travel and Trekking Jots & Shots
Bus Travel, Hitchhiking, and Rideshare
Rideshare from French River to Vancouver — here driving along Lake Superior near Wawa.
The Road… It’s almost impossible to get anywhere without it. Everyone uses it. Arguably, it’s nothing special. Yet it has a certain allure travellers find irresistible. Kerouac wrote about it. Lightfoot sang about it. Because it’s how you roll on it that makes it so memorable.
Road trips are widely beloved, renowned for their tendency towards mishap, misfortune, and happy endings. Yet sometimes it’s best to just put your transportation fate in the hands of strangers and trust that everything will work out for the best. It works… most of the time! So, the more adventurous stick out their thumbs to hitchhike, content to let hazard take them to their destination in its own good time. And in the past few years, organizing a rideshare online has become increasingly popular.
While I’ve had a life-long love affair with The Road, I’ve got a special affinity for the bus, which is perhaps the most notorious way to get around.
I have a love-hate relationship with the bus. In the same breath, I can declare both that I hate taking the bus and that I absolutely love bus rides. See the difference there? Lol!
Read a few of my articles about bus travel and you’ll see what I mean! Even though taking the bus is a great way to see local rural scenery while travelling, being on the bus for a long time really sucks. But, the bus is one of my favourite places to meet interesting people, and a long ride is necessary to have a decent conversation. Go figure.
Browse the following articles about road trips.
Many years ago, during my first time trekking Killarney‘s La Cloche Silhouette loop trail, I met another backpacker who claimed he preferred walking the trails at Frontenac Park. He told me that it was beautiful backpacking out there, so ever since then, I’ve been curious to check it out. Last long weekend, we finally got the chance! Actually, […]
Three years had passed since we had last been on the Ottawa-Temiskaming Highland Trail (OTHT), so we decided to return on the anniversary of our first trip, Canada Day weekend. Last time, we’d hiked up Rib Mountain, but this time we chose a route on the southern portion of the trail and settled on the Grand Campment-Nagle loop. […]
Six years ago, I went on a trip that took a lot of guts for me to take. I’d only been back from South Korea for about two months, but I was keen to get away from Ontario for the winter. So when I decided to take a Western Canada road trip and go backpacking British Columbia, the […]
We’d had our eye on backpacking Algonquin Park’s Eastern Pines Trail for some time now, since it’s a short, easy loop that we could do in a regular weekend without difficulty. It’s also accessible by water, so we’d been considering it as a possible hike and paddle combo. Still, we never imagined we’d return to Algonquin in June, […]
When I set myself a goal, if I put it in writing, I’m much more likely to achieve it. Posting my Hiking Hit List for this year didn’t so much feel like making a commitment than as making a reservation. I got super-excited to see some of the special spots I’d been dreaming about all winter, feeling like […]
In the Temagami area, the Ottawa-Temiskaming Highland Trail follows the original paths of First Nations peoples, thousands of years old, through old growth forests, up mountains, along cliffs, and around lakes. We had seen billboards advertising it before and found all the info we needed, including PDF maps, on the Nastawgan Trails website. We decided that hiking up […]
I’ve posted about CS a few times before, and now I’ve gathered all my top CouchSurfing tips in one place. Basically, this is a guide to the advanced uses of CouchSurfing, and how to make the best out of being an indie traveller. Although not about any particular destination, 10 Advanced Uses of CouchSurfing: A Multi-Tool for the […]
Upo Marsh is a remote and rural yet nevertheless accessible destination. It’s a large wetland, so I figured that the Upo Marsh circuit hike would take me all afternoon or longer. Located in Gyeongsangnam-do, near Changnyeong, it’s an easy hour-long bus ride from Busan‘s Seobu terminal. Travelling on my own, I arrived in Changnyeong around noon and quickly […]
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