Day 105 – 8/5/13 – 15.4 mi (1865)

We began the day with a clear goal: walk 14 miles by noon to have lunch at Subway in Mack’s Inn, ID. We succeeded!

We’d heard from others that hikers Portrait and Castle had been passive aggressively kicked out of Subway by having the outlets where they were charging their electronics shut off. We figured this story was somehow inaccurate or that they’d stayed for hours and worn out their welcome. When we dropped our packs outside, the OPEN sign, which was plugged into outlets by the tables, was on. By the time we got our sandwiches, it was off, along with all the outlets. We played dumb and asked at the counter if they would mind if we charged our phones while we ate. They claimed the breaker had tripped and there was nothing they could do about it.

We’re not stupid. After we finished eating, Sweetfish spoke to the manager and explained that word gets around among hikers and they were getting a bad reputation. There are many ways they could handle customers if they feel we’re loitering or don’t want people to charge phones, but turning off outlets when they see any hiker come in isn’t the right way to go about it. The manager admitted it wasn’t the breaker. Shortly after we left, from across the street, we could see the OPEN sign back on. I wish we hadn’t eaten there.

On a positive note, while in town we ran into the SOBO hobos, a pack of southbounders larger than our group! Well, one thing led to another and we ended up deciding to stay in town for the night to hang out with them. We were able to get a cheap cabin for all 11 of us.

We also had heard from another couple of southbounders we passed this morning that you could float the Henry’s Fork river in town. So 9 of the 11 of us decided to go. At 4:30 when we were loading the shuttle bus to be taken upstream the sky was getting dark with rain clouds and the wind was picking up. The raft company strongly advised us not to go, saying it would take us 5 hours to get back. Boo! We got our money back and went back to the cabin. It was probably just as well, I think the rafting would’ve been exhausting.

We spent the evening talking trail with the SOBOs and relaxing. The rest of the way to our next town, Lima, we will need to push hard to make up for our slacking today.