Day in Boise 8-11-07

Yesterday was a stay at home and take care of business day; phone stuff, laundry, bathroom cleaning etc. Oh, and I got a haircut, last one was in May. Makes me laugh, because back in the day I used to get my hair cut every four weeks, amazing how easily priorities can be changed!

Today we drove to Boise to scope out their Botanical Gardens, they were nice, but nothing too exciting. They were on the perimeter of an historical penitentiary. The Lewis and Clark garden is pretty new and it is plants that the expedition had collected on their journey of discovery back two hundred years ago across these parts. It will be more interesting when the plants mature and fill in. It had a lovely view from the top of the garden.

The garden took us all of about an hour and then we headed back through downtown Boise to check out their Mall. The Mall is always a fun place to people watch and to get a feel for the people of a region. This mall is very large and had a few stores I had never seen in a mall before like Pottery Barn. We shared a lunch of Bourbon Chicken, green beans and fried rice at the food court. In Macy’s at the Origin’s counter I found that for a LIMITED TIME ONLY they had my favorite Ginger Soufflé body cream and body wash in mega size where I could get like 4 times the product for only twice the price of the regular size. This being August and the month of my birth it is dangerous for me to shop because I start singing Happy Birthday to Me in my head when I find my favorite stuff…perfect justification…to me at least! A venti decaf iced latte from Starbuck’s finished off the expedition! We skipped Mrs. Fields…yay for us!

The valley is socked in with smoke from the fires in the mountains. We hit the road north tomorrow right through a region of fires, none near the roads we are planning on traveling, but smoke and fire teams can make finding a site in campgrounds a problem sometimes. We were going to try for a State Park, but who knows. The north panhandle part of Idaho is fireless right now but the route we wanted to take through the northwest part of Montana and back into Idaho is dotted with fires, so we’ll keep an eye on it all and just readjust our route accordingly!

It has been in the 90’s the last few days, but the humidity is low up here so it isn’t miserable, by Wednesday it may get into the triple digits which doesn’t occur here very often but we’ll be north in the mountains by then where it will be cooler.

All I’ve read is how there are an abundance of Bald Eagles up here and I was thinking that in 5 days I haven’t seen a one when Larry exclaimed “Eagle” and there was one sitting on top of a telephone pole. He offered to turn around, but my luck with wildlife means that after having turned around and just as the camera’s lens cap drops off and it is trying to focus, the raptor lifts off and I am left with a picture of a tail at the edge of a picture of the top of a telephone pole! I saved all of us from the humiliation by just continuing on down the road.