Boise, ID

Day 1: Salt Lake City to Boise, Idaho.

The drive on I-84 was bucolic and beautiful. The weather was slightly stormy and very windy, so we had a lot of high-speed flying tumbleweeds as highway companions. The sight was pretty hilarious - one tumbleweed would follow a car on the side of the road for miles; another would be bouncing along the middle of the street; several lodged themselves in cars' grilles.

We went to Boise to visit my brother and sister-in-law, who had just moved there from Salt Lake a couple of weeks before to an adorable house with a guest bedroom and bath. As we drove into the city, we turned on the radio and heard the song "I'm in Boise, Trick!" (a remix of this song - hilarious! Turns out they have all sorts of city-specific versions...check out "I'm in Your City Trick" on iTunes - Ft. Wayne? Chattanooga? The 'Burgh?). I had never been to Boise proper before, but the city really charmed and wooed me. The four of us ate dinner together at Gernika Basque Pub & Eatery - who knew Boise had such a rich Basque culture? There's apparently a huge Basque community stemming from the 1800s, many of whom make their living as sheepherders. I love that they're preserving elements of their culture through Basque language courses and the Fronton Association (Basque handball league - played in a court from 1912!). As a whole, Boise was a much more vibrant and lively city than I would have imagined - so many people out in the streets, dancing to live music, spending time with their friends, enjoying the weekend in the middle of the roads! The neighborhoods we visited seemed very clean and lovely and quaint, much like Salt Lake's Sugarhouse streets. I got a definite hip-but-not-too-hip young-family-living type of vibe. I mean, check out that father-son duo just drawing some sidewalk chalk art on a Saturday morning! We woke up early to check out the Farmers' Market, which, again, is right in the street, ensuring it's the place to be on a Saturday morning - like an arts and crafts festival, fresh food market, local musicians' gathering, and community circus all jammed into one (the Pride Parade literally marched right through the farmers' market the day we were there, and everyone was already there to enjoy the festivities with their groceries!). I had the most amazing vegetarian crepe for breakfast, and we stocked up on veggies for our dinner and a baguette that served as car snack for the remainder of the trip.

We all went for a stroll along the Boise River before we left. One more thing I loved about Boise - you know how cities seem to come to their own unspoken agreements about bicycle trends? Like, how some are dominated by the fixed-gear community and a certain amount of snobbishness, but in others you're fine clunking around on your old mountain bike to the coffee shop? Boise seems to have come to this amazing consensus - for what reason, it's not really clear, but I love it all the same - that they are a beach cruiser type of town. Everywhere you look, cruisers after cruisers after cruisers, clusters of cruisers chained together on bicycle racks, vintage cruisers, new cruisers, flowery cruisers, classic cruisers, you name it. It made my little heart flutter with happiness.