Boise

Jeff in the Boise foothills

Kristen in the Boise foothills

After our backpacking trip in the High Uintas, we planned to take a week ‘off’ – set up the big tent at a campsite for 5 straight days and relax.

Kristen still wasn’t feeling great from her Guatemalan virus, so we mostly hung out at coffee shops and ate at local restaurants whenever Kristen was feeling well enough.

Boise is actually a really nice place – it has a bit of a college town feel and is very outdoorsy, sort of like a more remote version of Boulder.  Not that we weren’t expecting it to be nice, but not THIS nice.  We had some fantastic meals (including one at a shop that specializes in french fries – 6 different types of potatoes in 5 different cuts), spent hours at the local hipster coffee shop (Flying M), and everyone we met was extremely friendly wherever we went.

Our campsite was about 40 minutes outside of town, in the country.  It smelled a little like a farm out there, but the open land and solitude was nice.  On the evening of July 4th, we drove up into the foothills near our campsite for a panoramic view of the fireworks displays from the surrounding towns (including Boise).  We saw around 8-10 different displays on the horizon, though they were all so far away we couldn’t hear the booms when the displays were going on.

By the end of the week, Kristen was finally feeling well enough to go for an easy mountain bike ride in the foothills outside of Boise.  The city maintains a large network of singletrack, and we had a great 1.5hr ride with some decent climbing and smooth descending on Shane’s Loop.

We were so impressed with the city that by the end of our time there, we decided it would be a great place to live.  If it weren’t in the middle of friggin’ nowhere.