Boise

There is an art to reading online write ups about an area.  Boise came with glowing reports of places to mountain bike.  Nah, not so much.  Most of the close in areas look like this.  These are foothills covered in tall dead grass.  The signs at the kiosks warn about ticks and rattlesnakes.

This would probably be better when it's cooler.  At the moment, it's just not that appealing.

Our next investigative trip was up to Bogus Basin, which is a ski area.  But wait, what is this?  From reading Metamorphosis Road, I recognize this as a disk golf thingy.  It's the only one we saw.

There are trails, and some of them weren't too steep, but we could not figure out how to get to the flat-ish sections.  All we could detect were switchbacks, at 7,000 feet.  We decided to hike.

Jim on the trail.  It was a nice hike.  There was much elevation gain and huffing and puffing. 

At the bottom of Bogus Basin drive there is this.  That's the Governor's Mansion.  Its history is very interesting.  It was originally built by the Simplots in 1979.  At the time, he was the 89th richest man in America.  He was the primary supplier of potatoes to McDonald's.  This is the house that potatoes built.  They sold it to the state in 2007, and it became the Governor's Mansion in 2009.  The current governor does not live there, perhaps because he divorced one of the Simplot girls.  The house website is interesting and has more pictures of the interior.

However, this is the most amazing thing about the property.  Remember those yellow brown hills?  This is the same terrain.  However, water has been applied to keep it green.  When we went by, there were people on riding mowers, there were people with push mowers, and people with weed whackers all engaged in the maintenance of this beautiful green acreage. 

Yesterday was sort of a slow day.  We awoke to yellow skies due to smoke from the California fires filling the valley.  It was just horrible.  No one was really interested in sucking down gallons of particulate matter, so we did not.  We did spend some time re-arranging our travel schedule for from now until the end of October.  There was much calling of people, writing on the calendar and the like.  Things have changed.  One must be flexible.

This morning we went for a walk in a near by neighborhood.  It's one of the best and most consistently maintained  housing farms we've seen in awhile. They must have a killer HOA.  There are mimosas growing in many yards.  I always thought they were warm weather trees, but they're here.

So, tomorrow we are off to Pueblo West, which has replaced our original goal of the Tetons.  My brother is there with his wife.  Laurence has early on set Alzheimer's.  Without going into detail, his decline seems to have accelerated so we are going there for a bit.  We plan to arrive in Capital Reef October 5, and hopefully the weather will hold for us.