Boise

When we were here in 2014, we could not for the life of us understand why Trader Joe’s had located in downtown Boise.  It’s the state capitol, people come to work during the week and then they go home.  Usually TJ’s is closer to urban or suburban density.  Sunday, after watching racing for awhile, we drove back into downtown to walk around.  The route GPS gave us was different than the previous one taken, and now we understand the TJ thought process.

Boise is having a building boom downtown.  Actually it’s everywhere, but in the downtown core they are building up, rather than out.

These will be apartments.

This is interesting.  The Jump is a community center of sorts.  They hold classes in making stuff, coding, things like that.  They have a lot of parking, as well.

In the back of the parking garage is a slide for the kids.  I would really like to know how hot this thing gets in the summer.

This is a climbing thing, also for the kids.  Note the enormous building in the back.

Then we started seeing young women wearing (to my eye) unusual clothing.  But hey, I’m old, what do I know about fashion?

Nope, this is definitely odd seeing someone wearing a furry animal head in Trader Joes, with a companion wearing an ankle length duster.

It’s because of this.  Four days of Anime!  I always think of Boise as sort of a meat and potatoes kind of place, but this conference has been going on since 2002.  Color me surprised.  Some of the costumes were phenomenal, but I was too slow with the camera.  We saw one young woman dressed all in black, carrying a sword and a silver helmet.  She was magnificent.  We should have gone around the block and asked for a photo.

The two ladies on the right twigged to my camera poking out of the truck, they have excellent situational awareness.

I holllered at them to shoot a hip and they did this.  They were very good natured about being photographed.  The red head is taking a bow.

So, Boise is changing in the core.  The suburbs continue their sprawling path involving the digging up of fields of good dirt to erect housing developments.  Traffic in the Garden City, Meridian, and Eagle ex-urbs is fairly horrific.  Given the number of new developments going up, it will only get worse.  Zoning restrictions appear to be minimal with subdivisions placed next to cow pastures which front on to hospitals.  One of the reasons we travel is to look for the final resting place, which is where we will live when we are too old and rickety to travel.  Boise is off the list.  Too hot in the summer, too cold in the winter.  There is a lot of medical here, between St. Alphonsus and St. Luke, but getting to it would be an exercise in frustration with all of the cars.

We stayed at the Hi Valley RV park, which I previously reviewed.  It’s still nice, still well cared for, and we would come back to this RV park.