5-8 June: IDAHO! / Coeur d'Alene

Well once again I've spent longer than I planned somewhere, but I'll back on the road today. First an update on the last few days. though.

On Thursday morning, Aron gave me a ride through Spokane, out to Spokane Valley. He dropped me off on WA-290, the road I intended to walk into Idaho until turning south on US-95 to head south to Coeur d'Alene. About ten miles into the day, I walked into Idaho. I stopped for lunch and locals' advice about a mile later at Curley's Bar & Bistro in Hauser (I felt the definitions and connotations of the word "Bistro" were a bit abused in this particular situation), and was told there was no place to camp except at Hauser Lake Resort, and I had little doubt that they charge an arm and a leg like everyone else.

I have got to get better at finding camping!

I walked two more miles up the road, noting some potential camp sites on the way, just in case, and started hitchhiking for Hayden. In less than five minutes I had a ride with Tom in an old blue beat up Chevy pickup truck. Now what a few people hintecl at but no one really impressed upon me was that Hayden is not really its own town. It's actually the sprawling, suburb-like sprawl of highway, strip malls, retail stores, Starbucks, and cookie cutter housing developments that a town the size of Coeur d'Alene seems too small to have, whereas I had been envisioning a distinct small town with its own personality. No place to camp here!

Unable to find anyplace with free WiFi, I went to Starbucks and actually paid to use it. Unfortunately, none of the CouchSurfers who listed their locations as Hayden had their phonu numbers on their profiles. Fortunately, Sarah, my Coeur d'Alene host, had left me a voicemail offering her couch a day early. I took her up on it, which is how I ended up spending an extra night.

Friday Sarah showed me around a bit and pointed out a quick hike I decided to do Saturday. Other than that, we hung out and chatted, and I made barbecued tofu sandwiches for dinner.

Saturday the weather was just plain crappy - cold & rainy - so we stayed in until mid-afternoon, when we went to meet Janna, a local CouchSurfer, for coffee. After a couple hours of great conversation we headed out for dinner at Bardenay, a local distillery whose spirits I did not sample, and then it was out for the evening with Sarah's fun and fascinating friends - thanks for the fun night in Coeur d'Alene, guys!

In a couple hours I'll be headed out to pop over to Kellogg and visit Alicia for a day, and after that I'll be on my wau north to Sandpoint and to hop onto US-2, the artery that I'll be following across the northern plains.

This is probably the last update until I reach Sandpoint on 12 June.