15 July: Day-37, Total-39; Miles-7, Total-1332 – Chuck

It rained reasonably hard all night. Our plan was to take the day off to allow Bill time to rest his neck. About 7:30am the rain stopped and we were both ready to get out of our tents. As I was putting on my shoes, Bill loudly announced that the "so & so" had stolen his sandals. Bill was not a happy camper. We both depend on our sandals everyday. I wear mine to wade into the water when packing and unpacking the canoe and when entering and exiting. Bill wears his nearly all the time. We both have spare footgear, but not sandals. As we were finishing breakfast, the young guy quietly appears behind Bill's tent. Bill informed him that he wanted them back and that the theft would be reported to Jay Sears, the local law officer who we met yesterday. The kid said he knew nothing. As he was leaving, I caught up with him. I told him that my friend was one bad dude and could really get mean, especially if someone steals his stuff. I asked if he knew where he might "find" the sandals. He said he would check and let me know.

About an hour later, after Bill had gone down to his canoe, the kid was in the bushes and signaled me to follow him. We walked down the shoreline about a quarter mile and he just stopped. I asked where the sandals were and he looked at the ground. Sure enough, there they were behind a small bush. I took them and told him to avoid Bill and our camp if he wanted to stay safe. He nodded and disappeared. I knew that Bill would not hurt this errant little 9th grader, but did want to scare the shoes out of him.

Bill suggested that we should either move our camp or just leave town. We decided to move on after we picked up a few items, did some chores and had lunch at the cafe. While I sent replies to the messages I received yesterday, Bill found a coffee pot in the corner of Chaundra's grocery store. When I caught up, he introduced me to John, who retired from the Air Force, Mary, and Sidney. All were interesting. Later Bill purchased a book that Sidney Hutchinson had written about Athabascan Indian life.

Yesterday at the Post Office we had talked with Lucy Williamson. She works at the local US Fish & Wildlife office. She told us to make sure we stopped at their Visitor Center while we were in town. Today, she helped me get a better map of the river. While there we met Dominique Watts, an Intern from the University of New Mexico and his friend Julie also from UNM. We learned about the Innoko National Wildlife Refuge from Lucy and Dominique.

After a late lunch, we got underway. The weather had cleared and it was a cool, calm day to paddle. This intended day of rest for Bill's neck did not work out as we had planned. After a couple of hours we started looking for a campsite. We soon found a low gravel island and pitched.