Day 1: Idaho? More like, You-da-ho!

Based on the indulgences of our last night in Seattle (see our previous post), we woke up a smidge less than bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but knew that we’d have to pull it together for one of our longer days of driving: eight and one half hours from Seattle to Boise, ID. We got onto I-90 East, and headed out through the grey, foggy morning.

This may sound typical of Seattle weather, but it’s NOT typical of a Seattle summer. That is, unless you’re talking about this summer, which has been about as cloudy as any February. Seriously, can’t someone cut these poor, pasty folks a break? The clouds cleared up once we got across the Cascade Mountains, and we’ve had sunshine ever since. We jumped on Route 82 into Oregon, which, it turns out, is actually part of the Oregon Trail! Ben immediately wanted to hunt for buffalo, but I knew that we’d never forge the river with that much meat, so we just kept on toward Idaho.

Near the border, we discovered something disturbing… A truck from Oregon carrying potatoes INTO Idaho. The potato lobby will be very upset when we blow the lid off this face of Idaho growing their own “famous potatoes.”

"Famous Potatoes"?  Yeah, right... 

We checked into hour hotel around 5:30 and looked on the internet for dog-friendly places to eat. We settled on a place called the Highlands Hollow Brewhouse, and found that their very tasty beers were great compliments to Ben’s burger and Allie’s hummus plate. We wanted to poke around downtown Boise, and found that they were having a bike race that evening. It ended up being a “Criterium,” which apparently means that they shut down nine city blocks and have 100 cyclist go t top speed and hope that “they don’t crash.”

It was fun, though, and the downtown was actually pretty cute, with lots of bars and cafes. After about an hour, we decided to call it a night, and after we convinced Zoe not to bark at everyone that walked by our room, got a restful night of sleep.

Next stop: Utah.