America 2025 – Day Four

Sunday 18 May 2025

Another solid sleep. Our Airbnb is very comfortable, the beds especially, and there’s a great recliner in the living room, too.

Woke up to some blue sky…and also to the wind howling through the trees in the front yard. It was seven degrees Celsius according to the Weather Channel app, but the ‘feels like’ was two when I went out for some exercise. That may have been an exaggeration. It felt like the middle of November in Boise, not late-May! It was nice in the sun, and when the wind dropped – but it didn’t do much of that throughout the day. Glad I packed some layers.

At least I got to see Boise and surroundings in all it’s considerable glory from the Depot lookout, which as I have often said, is the best lookout in town. Especially on a morning like this. You can see why they gave it the name Treasure Valley.

There were a lot of people out on the Boise Greenbelt and in the adjacent Boise State University campus. I guess that everyone – like me – was taking advantage of it being dry after a pretty miserable Saturday.

Later in the morning, we drove downtown to Julia Davis Park (adjacent to the Boise Zoo, which is very good), parked there and did a loop of almost 3km, along the Greenbelt, across the Boise River, through the Boise State campus, past the blue-turfed Albertsons Stadium where the football team plays, back across the river to the park. Like on my run earlier, it was chilly in the shade when it was windy, but glorious in the sun when the wind dropped.

Panera Bread for lunch. Soup weather – something I didn’t expect to say or type in May. Then we did some more walking, through downtown, where I gave in to the urge and bought a nice Boise State polo, and back around to the Idaho State Capitol, which, reminiscent of the largest one in Washington D.C., is a towering and impressive building that takes my breath away every time I see it.

These grand State Capitol buildings are one thing that America does really, really well. Unfortunately, we had to wait a little while to get the panoramic photos we wanted because a tour bus had parked – quite literally – right in front of the Capitol for a while. Good luck at the bad timing awards…

Back to the Airbnb mid-afternoon to pack and get some stuff sorted ahead of our departure tomorrow (I’m not looking forward to it; leaving this great city and the good people who live here gets harder every time).

I unpacked a few parcels that I had sent to Dave’s earlier in the month. I’d ordered a few polos, and thought the box containing them from Under Armour seemed very heavy, considering I was only expecting five polos. Somehow, the box was full of polos. Unfortunately, only the one colour. Thirteen teal-coloured Under Armour polos!

Not sure what happened at the packing stage, but someone at UA clearly read the order incorrectly. I checked my bank account, and was definitely only charged for one teal-coloured polo. So Dave now has a box of spare shirts to pass out to all his friends! (The other four shirts were delivered as ordered).

We were supposed to have dinner at Luciano’s, an excellent Italian restaurant nearby, but the wait time was nearly two hours so we pivoted – thanks to Kat – to Papa Joe’s, another Italian place, this one across the road from the Boise State campus. Many years ago, it was made famous after former NFL star wide receiver Chad Johnson went there and Tweeted about it. I agree with him: the food is good. There were seven of us, so we even got a private room.

For the record, I had: clam chowder soup (with three drops of lemon juice, as per the waiters’ suggestion) as an appetiser, spaghetti and meatballs for my main and tiramisu for dessert, washed down with a couple glasses of Recoil beer from the local Payette Brewing Company. Fun night with great friends.