Photo credit: Thad Ross
Wordless Wednesday: Idahome Leave
Photo credit: Thad Ross
Tag Archives: Idaho
Wordless Wednesday: Idahome
Photo credit: Thad Ross
Passing the Travel Bug from One Generation to the Next
I’m not sure when the plucky little insect had its first nibble of my pasty flesh, but as long as I can remember, travel has been a part of who I am. As the kid of two public school teachers, my travel wasn’t as far-flung as it is now, but even without a passport, it seems like we were always on the go when we had a chance; the travel bug claimed another sweet victim. Summers were spent loaded up in a camper, touring the Northwest with a booth at many of the big arts and crafts shows that were abundant in the 1980s, my parents selling beautifully handcrafted woodwork under their Shadowtree label. (Totally not legal or considered “good parenting today,” but I have to say that we had some good times riding in that camper shell and we are definitely no worse the wear for those hours. We played games, read novels, colored in coloring books, completed workbook pages from the ones we carefully picked out from the teacher stores the weekend before…oh yes, and spent a decent chunk of the time writing notes on paper, bashing our fists against the window to gain parental-attention and tattling on each other via notebook paper and crayons. I seem to remember there being written complains about bathroom needs and hunger pains as well.)
As we got older and the summers of woodworking sales gave way to volleyball camps and piano lessons and G/T summer school classes, the suitcases gathered no dust. Road trips to the Redwoods, wanderings through Yellowstone National Park, spying bison and the first kind of hotpot I knew (China would introduce me to a whole new world of wonder with the same name) and a family trip to the nation’s capital marked our spring breaks.
Shiny new blue passport in hand and bags packed, next came studying abroad in the Dominican Republic, a trip to Haiti, semana santa in Puerto Rico and a scuttled (and often lamented still today) trip to Cuba.
A decade later Peace Corps would scratch the itch left behind by the travel bug, in no way lessening it. Rather, that little bug bite became a life-long infection that has seen us returning to Chengdu with the Foreign Service, spending a couple of years in Kuala Lumpur and now eagerly awaiting this summer’s bidding season when we will see where our next pushpin will land on the map.
All of this to say, for me the love of travel started young and I am excited to see it continuing in my niblings. Last weekend, one of my nieces had the chance to go to Portland with her family for a short road trip. They just spent a few days in the awesome Oregon town, but I think she still managed to hit most of the main tourist attractions. Upon her return to Idaho, as an avid reader of In Search of the End of the Sidewalk (okay, I am not sure she ever reads it, but I do think she checks out the pictures sometimes) she decided to sit down and do a bit of travel writing herself, putting together a blog post of her own.
So, without further ado dear readers, please enjoy this guest blog post by Miss Keira, a budding traveler (we’ll have to get that passport in the works ASAP) and burgeoning writer.
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Party in Portland
To begin, this is what my family did this weekend. First, we drove to our hotel. It was a six-hour drive. Can you believe that? On our way, we saw a huge waterfall. At the hotel, my brother Keegan and I had to share a bed but that was OK. He ended up sleeping on the floor one night anyway.
The next morning, we woke up and got dressed. Did I mention that my mom was in a parade? The parade was awesome! My favorite float was a jaguar made out of all different kinds of flowers. All around his float were dancers who had wooden bells on their boots.
After the parade, we went to Voodoo Donuts. Those donuts were amazing! I got a VooDoo doll donut. It was shaped like a doll and had raspberry filling that was supposed to look like blood. There was even a pretzel stick stabbed in the heart.
Also, I got to go to Powell’s. Powell’s is a huge bookstore that was one city block. There were different rooms for different kinds of books. My favorite was the pink room with all of the kids’ books. I got a book called The Lunch Witch and I read it in one and a half days. The girl in the book turned into a frog.
Finally, it was the day that we went home. Portland was awesome but we had to go home. We packed up our things and left the hotel but before we went home, we got to go to OMSI. This is a museum about science. We went with my mom’s friend Heather and her son Logan. We got to see a 3-D printer and there was a tsunami machine where I got to build a house that would not get run over by the waves on the shoreline. We got to levitate foam balls on air pressure machines in a big room full of balls tubes.
All in all, Portland was amazing. I like to travel and go on vacations because I get to see new things. Someday, I would like to go visit Wisconsin because I hear that they have cheese.
Wordless Wednesday: Summer Planning Via My Niece
Not a Pioneer
If you are of a certain age (not to give anything away, but let’s say 30-something), you probably remember eagerly awaiting your turn on the one classroom computer to take your chances on Oregon Trail. (Actually, when I was in first grade, I remember having to go to the hallway to use the computer, which was on a rolling cart and had a Puff the Magic Dragon on the screen when it booted up. I have no recollection about whether that was part of a particular program or had to do with the operating system, but I loved that giant green dragon with smoke billowing from his nose. Computer time!)
I remember rushing through my phonics workbook so that I could get my name on the computer-user list early, as nothing was more exciting than taking chances on a virtual trek across the United States in search of the bountiful land promised by the Oregon territory. (To be fair, I always rushed through my phonics workbook. It was utterly boring. And worse than the phonics pages themselves was the fact that the teacher then told me to color in all of the pictures when I was done. I remember being extremely annoyed by this request, as even at the young age of six I could detect busy work when it came my way. Coloring in the socks, fox and clocks in no way taught me that “cks” and “x” had the same sounds, but it did keep me from being first to the pillow pile with my library book!)
But I digress.
Oregon Trail.
I loved that game, green screen and all. Hunting was a huge part of surviving to the end of the game and I was an ace at taking down a bison or two (big and slow, no skills needed), but the squirrels and rabbits alluded my slowly typed “POW”s and “BANG”s. Wild game may have kept virtual-me alive long enough to fall victim to typhoid, dysentery and snakebites, but I’ve recently been reminded IRL (you know, gamer code for “in real life”—I’m hip like that!) that I was never cut out to be a pioneer.
I just don’t have a tough bone in my body.
A few weeks ago, I was home in Idaho for the holidays (the first time in years!) and was greeted by falling snow the very first morning. Luckily, I brought home my one pair of pants and my one hoodie so that I had something to wear to Target where I could pick up another sweater or two. (Right there you can realize how un-tough I am. My first stop Stateside was Target.) That beautiful snow that covered the ground through Christmas morning set the perfect scene for a winter wonderland holiday season, but it also dropped several feet of wet, sticky frozen mess on the deck/roof of my parent’s cabin in central Idaho. Not long after the wrapping paper had been bundled into the recycling bin and the last of the holiday treats were consumed, we headed north to do a bit of snow shoveling. I’ve never loved winter, but after spending nearly two years acclimatizing to a low of 75 degrees, when the thermometer in the car hit -7, I knew I was going to be in trouble! As soon as we got to the cabin, folks geared up for the cold weather, heading outside to shovel and snow blow, taking weight off the deck and making room for the roof snow to come off in sheets. Realizing I was in no way prepared to face the freezing temperatures, not in terms of clothing or mental toughness, I quickly volunteered to tend the home fires.
Literally.
With flames raging in the fireplace, I made it my task to make indoors nice and cozy so when the shovel-bearing folks came in, they’d be able to thaw their fingers and dry their layers. I also spent the morning entertaining the young ones who quickly got tired of the cold. (Snow is fun when it is above freezing, but below that mark, it doesn’t take long for a little body to chill all the way through, even with sleds calling their names.) Plus, on top of fire tending and child entertaining, I made lunch for the entire work crew. (Alright, those of you who know me well are starting to think this must all be a dream. That is more domestic duty than I’ve done in my entire life! But I promise, those options were far more enticing than facing the cold, wet snow in jeans and a hoodie.)
So, I am not tough when it comes to cold. Fact established. I would have died from exposure on the Oregon Trail.
(After complaining about being frozen for a few weeks, my vacation was over and it was time to head back to Kuala Lumpur, work and my “real” life. I was looking forward to some warm weather and eating on patios once again, but it seems my complaining bit me in the butt. Let’s call it temperature karma. An embassy near the equator with no air conditioner. That is what I found on Monday morning. The details are long and uninteresting, but basically there were generator problems, which meant AC problems, which meant our office was 96 degrees on Monday. [Not an exaggeration.] Tuesday was not better. )
Temperature isn’t the only thing that would have prevented me from being a hardy pioneer. The first major obstacle to my successful reincarnation as an outdoorsy survivalist? Food. As a matter of fact, I would most surely have died of starvation before the elements got to me. I may have made it through the virtual continent crossing on wild game and my wits, but on a day to day basis, I’m more likely to starve than eat something strange.
Case in point: Today I ordered a chicken quesa from the food truck parked outside the embassy. (Chicken quesa= chicken meat and cheese in a soft taco shell, folded over like a taco.) I ordered it plain, figuring that minus the onions and sauce, it would be an acceptable lunch and get me through the afternoon. I was wrong. I am not sure how much actual chicken meat made it into my quesa (quesa is not a thing!), but I can tell you that I must have had close to half a chicken’s worth of chicken skin in that thing. I tried to discreetly pick it out, but when I pulled on a huge, slimy chunk, I almost lost what I had already eaten. Enough of that. I pulled the tortilla off and ate that and then supplemented today’s lunch with some chocolate. Not an option for pioneers!
In the end, it appears that I was just never meant for the life of crossing the continent in a covered wagon. If the food that was entirely “meat on the bone” didn’t cause me to starve to death, the inclement weather over the passes would definitely have done me in. (And don’t even think of the possibility of the two combining in a macabre Donner party-esque manner.) As a matter of fact, I’m not sure I survived the virtual trek too many times, even as I was sitting in a warm classroom, avoiding the busy work of phonics sheets. I’ll stick to my white-meat boneless chicken breasts, my humid Malaysian climate with the comforts of AC a few steps away, claiming the giant beanbag/pillow as my own personal reading corner.
Sugar Beet Harvest
Recently, as I was scrolling through my Facebook feed, mostly in an effort to avoid working on a chapter in my thesis that was quickly become painful (think: redundant, superfluous, unnecessary, beating a dead horse, and just overall not adding a single new idea to academic discourse), I came across the headlines for the daily newspaper in my hometown. The Idaho Press Tribune has been a part of my reading repertoire since before I could actually decipher letters, words, paragraphs and articles. While that jet black in was still nothing more than strange black squiggles on paper, I was able look at the photographs, make stories out of the comics and figure out if there was going to be a yellow sun in the sky or a menacing cloud with a lightning bolt overhead each morning. Living overseas, it has been years since I actually had a subscription to the paper, but that doesn’t mean I’m not up to date with happenings in the Valley. Not only do I see the headlines in my Facebook feed each evening (the advantage to being fourteen hours ahead in that the morning news stories show up before I go to bed), but I still get occasional clippings in the mail from my dear mother. (I never know which stories are going to show up in the envelope. It might be one about a former student who is doing well. Or maybe the story will be about someone we went to church with growing up. Book lists often make the clippings cut, as do random comic strips and the occasional goofy article included just to make me laugh.)
Most of the stories that make the newsfeed headlines have to do with local construction projects that are shutting down lanes of the freeway or the drama of a school board election recall campaign. Those pass me by like Malaysian snatch and grab hoodlums on scooters. But, recently, one caught my eye and then my heart. The headline read: “Sugar beet harvest on the horizon.” Of all the days for the IPT posting to catch my eye, it was the day they wrote about the sugar beet harvest. I instantly felt a pang of homesickness, as nothing says fall in southern Idaho quite like the sugar beet harvest.
Sugar beets hold a special place in the memories of my childhood. I was fascinated by those giant brown tubers. Once harvest season started, giant trucks filled over the brim with the beets would roll by our house, one after another, all day long. Because they were filled by other giant machines, they were always overly full, meaning as they sped along the road, the top-most layer of beets fell to the wayside, littering the edges of the country roads. I can’t begin to count how many of those sugar beets I collected with my sister and brother over the years. For a long time, I was convinced that if I could crack one open, I’d find it full of sugar. After all, it was a *sugar* beet. In my eight year old mind, if I could only get through that tough outer layer, I’d have cups of refined sugar, just like the stuff in the yellow Tupperware sugar bowl on the dining room table. Sweet! Of course, the truth was about as polar opposite of that as one can imagine, which I found out once we were finally able to chop through one of the beets with a sharp-edged shovel.
No sugar.
That’s what the sugar beet factory is for. That appellation itself is a bit divisive. Everyone who was raised in the area calls it nothing more and there is no need to explain that the factory actually refines sugar and doesn’t *make* sugar beets, as the name seems to imply. I’ve heard people argue that it isn’t correct terminology to refer to the operations as a sugar beet factory, but these are usually the same folks who’ve moved in from California and Texas who think Boise is pronounced with a “z” sound at the end. You’re non-Idahoan ways are showing, folks!
If you are local to the Treasure Valley, the sugar beet factory is a landmark, both visually and olfactory. Someone once tried to tell me it had an “almond-y” smell, which I would heartily disagree with, but after living away from home for so many years, I must admit to a fondness for the unique stink that permeates the valley during processing season. One whiff of that unique odor and I know I am home.
It’s a bit ironic that I’m weirdly touched by an agricultural headline from home at a time when agriculture in Southeast Asia seems to be trying to kill us all. Indonesia is burning crops at the end of the growing season (and forests in an attempt to make more room for palm oil plantations) and the smoke from their fires is infiltrating the Malaysian peninsula to an unprecedented level. The air has been so hazy that Malaysian schools have been cancelled three days in the last two weeks and it burns my eyes to be outside for more than an hour or two at a time. Maybe it is precisely because of the current air situation in Malaysia that I am drawn to stories of home, where the sky is blue, the leaves are changing color and the harvest is in full swing.
It doesn’t matter how far I travel or how many stamps clutter up the pages of my passport, at heart I will always be from Idaho, land of sugar beets and giant trucks and that oh-so-familiar smell of Nampa’s sugar beet factory, as well as home of the Idaho-Press Tribune, a relic in world where news consumption has shifted to the online world rather than the rolled up paper delivered to one’s driveway each morning.
Tea with Tales and Tails
Three weeks in Idaho were not just filled with gun ranges, rodeos and county fairs (see those stories here!); it had a softer side was well. In between picking up casings and stepping over piles of farm animal poo, I squeezed in a bit of “girl-time.”
My best friend, who has a fantastic new job as a traveling nurse (I must admit to not totally understanding the logistics of the program, but love the fact that if we got posted to DC next, there is a chance she could take a gig on the East Coast and we could be neighbors for a few months) flew up to BOI to spend a few days of what turned out to be non-stop chatter and catching up. As we yakked endless with stories of her new job and my new home, we did find time to do a bit of shopping and not just any old shopping, but shopping with a mission- a Marine Ball dress! She and her husband are going to be in KL this fall, arriving just in time for the annual gala, so a fancy new dress was on the “to do” list. After wandering through the mall and surrounding shops, trying on shimmering dress after glittery dress, she eventually settled on a gorgeous navy blue gown that is going to be perfect for the ball. So pretty!
BFF dress shopping was at the start of my time home, but not content to get away with just one major shopping excursion, I book-ended my vacation with another (bigger!) outing at the very end. This one was with my older sister and two nieces, who needed new outfits for their trip to Washington DC. My sister won a national STEM teacher of the year award and as part of her prize package (yes, there was a whole package!) she got to go to the White House to meet the president and she figured the clothes hanging in her closet weren’t quite White House-worthy, so back to the mall we went! This time we were in search of a couple nice dresses for her various events, as well as for the girls who were invited to the awards reception. After an entire day at the mall, I think they walked out with six dresses (two each), three pairs of shoes and enough accessories to have everyone sparkling just right. I do think I created a monster though when I introduced the idea of “holding” a dress while you look at other shops. I don’t think this was on either of their radars and suddenly, tough delicious about which dress to pick were put on the back burner so we could continue to pursue the mall. Put all the dresses on “hold!” In the end, everyone came out looking fantastic. Another successful styling/shopping trip in the books!
Girl-time wasn’t all filled with swipes of the credit card though (luckily most of these were not mine!), as I did get to participate in this year’s annual teddy bear tea party, hosted by my mom for the little girls. This year’s theme was “Tea with Tales and Tails.” We invited the two youngest girls (first and second grade), who were each requested to bring along a favorite tale and tail. Both girls came bearing fantastic picture books and a fuzzy stuffed friend. After hauling out piles of animals from Grandma’s teddy bear stashes, we were ready for our tea party. A few rounds of “crazy apes” (the dollar store version of crazy 8s), we were warmed up and ready for a lunch of Uncrustables and bananas with pink lemonade to wash it all down. This tasty meal for four was accompanied by everyone reading their favorite book from the pile. Our lovely tea party wrapped up with brand new coloring books and crayons for the littles, which were promptly opened and a fantastic session of coloring commenced.
Looking back, my three weeks in Idaho were actually a well-balanced calendar of “Idaho!” and girly-girl time. Guns were shot. Dresses were bought. Cowboys were thrown from bulls. Picture books were read just in time for back to school. Take a bit of this plus a bit of that, throw them together and you get the fixings of an All-American hometown vacation.
#BPLComiccon15
Idaho friends, don’t pass up this chance to check out a great activity in Boise in just over a week. The email below is from the event’s most-magnificent organizer, long-time friend and one of our regular overseas couch-surfers, Josh.
Be there or be square!
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There are only nine days until the 3rd Annual Library Comic Con arrives on Aug. 29th! Excited? Terrified? Wholly indifferent? Too full of competing emotions to have a clear idea of what you’re feeling? Maybe this email will help.
First, I’d like to share a few new things that we’re trying out for this year’s event:
- The Friends of the Library will be selling a specially commissioned commemorative LCC15 poster during the con. The artwork is by local creator Adam Rosenlund http://www.adamjrosenlund.com/ Adam has also recently designed a traffic box wrap for the city, which will be installed either later this year, or next summer. The Friend’s poster will be 13×19, printed on nice paper stock, limited to 250 copies, and sold for $10.
- To really spruce the place up this year, several team members, with the help of our wonderful pages, constructed post-it note artwork, some of which will be involved in a Super Mario themed scavenger hunt. Wonder Woman was completed yesterday, and is currently guarding the Artist’s Alley.
- Local artist Jim Sumii is in the process of constructing a “Pikture Booth” where, for a small donation, he will draw caricatures of passersby. He plans to donate all proceeds to the Friends.
Additionally, we’ll be bringing 14 amazing special guests to Boise, including Nate Powell, Steve Lieber, Emi Lenox, Farel Dalrymple, Joëlle Jones, and many more. You can read about all of our LCC creators here: http://www.boisepubliclibrary.org/classes-events/library-comic-con/2015-library-comic-con-guests/
There will be three food/drink vendors: Fanci Freez, Pie Hole, and St(r)eam Coffee. The 501st Legion will be attending all day (Stormtroopers!), as will the R2D2 Builders group, with at least three, life sized droids. Why hasn’t there previously been any LARPing, you say? What is this LARPing thing, you say? It’s Live Action Role Play, and it’ll be happening this year! There will be a Zombie Walk, (no, I’m not just talking about the staff at the end of the day). Need to know how to make a wand? Don’t worry, Dave Ultis from Citizen Scientific Workshop has you covered!
This is the website for LCC15, which has more information as well as specific times for events. http://www.boisepubliclibrary.org/classes-events/library-comic-con/ And if anyone would like to share this information with friends, family, random people on the street, that neighbor that keeps complaining about your lawn, your child’s harried school teacher, the local fishmonger, or just on your own social media, please feel free. We even have a hashtag to use this year: #BPLComiccon15, because we’re fancy like that!
“What I Did on My Summer Vacation”
“What I Did on My Summer Vacation.” The much dreaded first essay of a new school year is a perfect fit as we wrap up Summer 2015. In school, this is where your English teacher gets a sneak peak of your writing skills. Can he use punctuation correctly? Does she know the difference between their/there/they’re? Has he figured out that paragraphs really are the go-to structure for an essay and that indentation is more than a passing fad? These are all the things your teacher is making mental notes of while you squirm and try to finagle a summer of video games and sunbathing into an essay that makes it sound like you read the complete works of Toni Morrison and spent your free time perusing the artifacts of the Smithsonian.
Although it has been years since I had to write such an essay, it is a perfect theme for my return to the blogging world. (Again, if you read the previous post, I blame my month of silence on a combination of vacation, Secretary Kerry and a bit of laziness.) Three weeks of my summer were spent back in Idaho, and what an “Idaho” vacation it was. Between a trip to the gun range, a night at the rodeo and visit to the county fair, I pretty much fell right back into the rural lifestyle with which I was raised.
Now, the gun range is not on my normal “to do” list. As a matter of fact, I’d only ever shot a gun once before this summer’s trip, but when it came up as a possibility, I was all over it! What’s not to love about pinging metal targets and shooting clay pigeons? Between the rifles, revolvers and pistols, we had a pretty good assortment of hardware for our morning outing. I do have to say though, I think I am much more of a pistol kind of girl than a rifle one. That rifle tried to knock me on my ass more than once and left a nice little sore spot on my shoulder. While we had our tiny arsenal to play with, I think the guys up a few spots from us at the range brought the militia. I have no idea what they were shooting with, but I’m going to take an uneducated guess and say rocket launchers and tanks!
The gun range outing was followed up, just a few days later, by a trip to the annual Snake River Stampede. This year was the 100th anniversary of the Stampede, so the turnout was great. A packed house! Events kicked off early with mutton busting and then headed right into full-blown patriotism with giant flags hauled around the arena by pretty girls on the back of prettier horses. (For those of you unaccustomed to the rodeo circuit, mutton busting is how dads break in baby cowboys. Little kids, think four and five year olds, are placed on the back of sheep who then haul mutton-butt across the arena, trying to rid themselves of the forty pound monkeys on their backs. This usually ends with a toddler face-first in the dirt and a happy sheep doing what they do best- huddling with the rest of its herd. I am not sure how much little kids actually enjoy this event, but for the spectators, it is hilarious!) Between bronc riding, roping and bull riding, the evening was a success- more so for the livestock than the riders, but a success nonetheless.
And, of course, any summer in small-town America is not complete without a trip to the county fair. Being the thrifty family that we are, we opted to go on “free” day- the first day of the fair. We got there right at lunchtime so we could enjoy the wonders of fair food (although, I was hugely disappointed to not get my brick of fries that is my normal go-to choice at the Western Idaho Fair) and then it was into the exhibit hall to check out the entries and 4-H projects. (As a former 4-H-er myself, I understand the last minute struggle to get those portfolios in tip-top shape just days before they are due.) I was excited to see that my 14-year old niece won several ribbons for her artwork (including a grand champion!)and her 10-year old brother got a ribbon for his woodwork piece. From there it was out to see the stars of the show- the animals! I was bummed to see that there is no longer a llama 4-H club in the area, but did enjoy looking at the cows, goats, rabbits and, of course, my favorite- the pigs. It was a hot (but not Malaysia-sticky!) day, so a few hours of wandering the fairgrounds were enough for our entire entourage. I skipped the carnival part of the fair, as I am already terrified by most rides to begin with and then you add in the fact that they were just pieced together that morning by a few sleep-deprived carnies and I will have to take a pass. How easy would it be to lose a crucial screw in the grass, misplace a necessary nut or just botch the thing in general? No thanks!
Summer 2015. It was as “Idaho” as one can get, and yet it was also just about perfect. My three weeks back Stateside were filled with family and friends, which are the things we miss most as we hop around the world from country to count every couple of years. Being home was a nice break and makes me look forward to December- our first Christmas home in almost five years! With summer quickly fading in the rear view mirror, it is time to buckle down at work (VIP visits), with school (a thesis) and personally (TLC for the blog). Ready…set…go!
Wordless Wednesday: My Little Piece of Central Idaho
In Search of the End of the Sidewalk 