11-13 June: Sandpoint

I arrived in Sandpoint around noon on Wednesday, and just bummed around town for the afternoon. I went to Mick Duff's brewpub, which had been recommended to me the day before by Jonathan, who was my ride to town from further south. The food & beer were both good, and I was happy for the nice recommendation. If anyone happens to go through Sandpoint, stop at Mick Duff's for the porter, it is excellent.

That afternoon I walked the six blocks or so from downtown to Robyn's house, where her son, Nathan let me in. Nathan was a nice guy, showed me around the place, and was quick to offer me anything a traveler might need. An hour or so later, Robyn came home from work and we began to get acquainted. A delicious stir fry dinner and several hours of conversation wore me out, though, so bedtime came rather quickly.

On Thursday I woke up and chatted with Robyn a bit more. She recommended Monarch Mountain Coffee as a nice place to sit and relax, and I checked it out. It was one of the nice neighborhoody coffee shops that is easy to love for its atmosphere, where locals come in for coffee and end up lost in conversation and banter and probably running late because of it. The espresso: not so good; the cappuccino brownie: delicious.

After Monarch Mountain, I wondered down by the beach and just meandered for a while until I found myself at the Edgewater Resort (the Best Western in Sandpoint), which Robyn and Nathan had said was the best place in town to sip a bloody mary.

I opted instead to lunch at Eickhardt's, a pub whose garlic fries they had both said were not to be missed. The garlic fries that I got instead of plain fries with my fish & chips were pretty damn good, but unfortunately what I'm discovering is that the oil in fish & chips has gotten to be too much for me, now that I'm not eating much fried food. So I'll have to stop exploring the fish & chips options all over the place, which is a bit of a sad thought for me. In addition to the garlic fries, there was another bright spot to my lunch at Eickhardt's: they had a porter on cask. Combining the porter style with the traditional cask serving method is tops for me, so of course it was my drink of choice with lunch. I believe it was Winthrop Porter, which I'd never heard of before, but it was one of the best cask porters I've had.

Another great thing about Eickhardt's was the decor. Some of it was haphazard, there were funny signs hanging about the place. It was darkish, the way a good pub should be, and on the comfortable, well-loved side of divey. The best thing, however, was the tap handles hanging upside-down from the ceiling; not a terribly uncommon way of storing & displaying them, I know -- but their collection was huge, for a little pub in a town the size of Sandpoint. I estimated there were between 500 and 550 tap handles hanging from the ceiling, many of them from breweries that no longer exist. A couple other guys who were new to the place were commenting on them and asking about the building; my comment was that the tap handles were probably worth more than the building!

After Eickhardt's, I returned to Mick Duff's to try their barleywine, which the previous day's bartender had told me was her favorite offering there. The thing was delicious, big and chewy, and not hugely bitter & hoppy like a lot of American barley wines. In truth, its richness and chewiness reminded me of a significantly less bitter Double Bastard. Needless to say, it was a sipper -- it took me about an hour and a half to get through it, and next thing I knew I had drunk my afternoon free time away with just one beer!

I stepped out into the fresh air and immediately noticed that -- finally! -- it was getting sunny. This was my first sight of sunshine in well over a week, other than a couple brilliant hours of it in Kellogg. So the potluck that Robyn and I had scheduled for tonight might be a backyard sort of thing, after all. I stopped by Safeway on my way to Robyn's, to get salad fixings and restock on food for my walking and camping.

Walking around Sandpoint was pleasant. I definitely heard some complaints about its growth over the past ten years while I was there (just like everywhere else in the west), but to me it seemed to have retained a small-town feel. The residential streets were tree-lined and shady, many without curb and gutter (not to mention sidewalks), and there was a certain sleepy feeling in the streets. In an odd way, it reminded me of Savannah, Georgia.

Back at Robyn's, I threw my salad together and did a little cleaning up. Soon Robyn was home, and not long after, people began arriving for the potluck. The first person to arrive was Robyn's friend Nancy, who was ready to try out CouchSurfing. The next few were new to the idea: Tim & Nancy, from Sandpoint, and Mimi, a Belgian transplant via southern California. Those three had found out about the potluck from an article in the local newspaper (http://www.bonnercountydailybee.com/articles/2008/06/12/news/news03.txt), which the paper had written in response to Robyn's submission of the potluck to the newspaper's weekly calendar. The potluck was supposed to be a celebration of the first International CouchSurfing Day, which the article did not mention, but it was definitely in the CouchSurfing Spirit to expose new people to the idea on this "holiday."

A few other CouchSurfers came to the potluck: Matt, from Sandpoint; Marsha, also from Sandpoint but living up the road in Bonners Ferry; and Michael, a traveler from Ireland who was hitchhiking around the world and staying on Marsha's couch for the night. We all, CouchSurfers and non- alike, had good conversation about travel and life in general. When the potluck was winding down, we CSers migrated to Eickhardt's for a few drinks.

Eickhardt's that night was a much different creature from the sleepy pub I'd seen at lunch. It turned out that Thursday was dollar beer night, when the pub chose a beer at random and pints of that beer cost only a dollar until it ran out. The beer for the night turned out to be New Belgium's 1554, which is my favorite beer by that brewery. Pitchers of that beer were only FOUR DOLLARS, and when I texted this in astonishment to Kris, his reply was "Get drunk!" Well, I hope I made Kris proud.

Marsha introduced us to all of her friends at the pub, and there were a LOT of them. They were an open, friendly, fun group of people and seemed interested in anything and everything. Thanks largely to the people I met in Sandpoint, I see myself returning for a longer visit; hopefully I'll do some hiking & kayaking next time!

The next day (Friday) I was up & out (after saying good-bye to Robyn on her way out) relatively early to get some pictures of the long bridge that I crossed coming into town. I hadn't been able to take photos the first time around, because my camera batteries had died the previous night (hence, no photos of my nice campsite outside of Sandpoint, either). So I stopped at the Conoco station for some batteries about a half mile before the bridge, and loaded them into the camera when I'd gotten to the bridge. To my surprise, the new batteries were just as dead as the old ones! I went back to the station and got my money back, but I didn't really have the gumption to walk back to the bridge AGAIN to get pictures -- it'll have to wait until my next visit. I stopped by Monarch Mountain again for some coffee (not espresso this time) and wandered town some more, taking in the niceness of it. Finally, I went back to Robyn's to pack up my stuff and get out onto the road.