Between Lambtown in early October and Rhinebeck, New York two weeks ago I made a quick trip to Boise. My son got a ride here from Idaho to attend a wedding but then needed to get back home. I’d never had a chance to see the house he and Meryl bought over a year ago so this was a good chance, besides the opportunity to visit with them.

As I sorted through photos for this post I determined that this is a FAIL for photos of my family as it is mostly landscape and road trip type photos. That’s OK I guess, because even though I use this blog as my personal scrapbook, maybe I should be more reserved about sharing family photos. That’s my excuse, but it turns out that I didn’t take any, unless photos of dogs and cats count.

I was glad to let Chris drive. We had lots of conversation and I amused myself with a few landscape photos.

We drove to Boise on Tuesday. The next day we did two errands that were business related for me. We delivered salted sheepskins to the business that had tanned some for me a couple of years ago but then relocated. They are just starting up again and I we met in Boise to transfer the salted pelts from my car to her truck–a very convenient transfer for me. I look forward to getting these back. Then we drove to Lunatic Fringe at a location not far from Boise.

Lunatic Fringe is not open as a retail shop but I am one of their vendors and order cotton and hemp yarns and kits from them. It was fun to visit and be able to shop on-site instead of just on-line. Look at that selection!!

I was pleased to see this kit that they had just put together after I used their hemp in an article that was published in the most recent Little Looms magazine.

These are the bags I wove for the article.

This is the only photo I got of Chris and Meryl. At least they can’t accuse me of badgering them for family photos. We were walking on some trails in the hills north of Boise.

The view of the city from above.

I gave Chris and Meryl one of the cat baskets that I have been making. I think Luke is a little big for it, but I don’t expect these baskets to hold their shape once they are in use by the intended recipients.

This could be a scene from home but we don’t have any stoplights on our North Meridian.

On Thursday Chris and I went to the Idaho State Museum. It is an interesting museum and I’d go back to spend more time with some of the displays. We learned about parachuting beavers. (If you google beavers in Idaho you’ll find a few videos that explain what that’s about.)

I was amused to see this in the museum. My kids used to play a version although we didn’t have an Apple computer at the time.

Information about the number of sheep in Idaho and about women in Idaho ranching.

These are just a few many interesting displays at this museum. It would be easy to spend a few more hours there.

We drove downtown and parked so we could wander around the area.

Later we took the dogs for a ride and then a walk in natural area a friend told me about. That was an important part of my visit. I reconnected with a friend I had worked with in Utah around 1978. I last saw her when Chris was very young.

This prompted me to look back in the old photo albums to figure out when we had visited. I found this in the 1992 album. Those are my three kids in the middle, Matt, Katie, and Chris, and Joyce’s kids on the outside. Coincidentally they are named Dan and Katie, just to make things confusing. I hope to get to Boise again to visit Chris, 30 years older than in this photo, and Joyce too (maybe we’re only 15 years older?? I wish.)

I had to be home on Friday because there was a group of people coming on Saturday. So I took off Friday morning. I followed my phone’s directions to get out of Boise and for some reason ended up on the road to Elko instead of Winnemucca. That is the problem of not using real maps anymore. But it added only about an hour to the drive and I saw different country, although I don’t know where I took this photo.

This is probably Nevada. I think I got home at dark.