To Idaho and Back Again

When my friend Amanda mentioned that she would be staying at the Ezra Pound House in the Sun Valley area to work on a video project, I was jealous. We had some big adventures there last year. When Amanda suggested that I fly out to Boise and join her on the trip, I dismissed the idea as too expensive and impractical. But then I found an airfare cheap enough that generous birthday gifts from my family would just cover it, and Shaun agreed to take a Friday off work to be with the boys. So after much dithering and hand-wringing about doing something so fun without the rest of my family, I found myself getting up at 4am to catch a 6:30 flight to Boise.

There are times when everything that can go wrong does, but this trip was the opposite of that. I didn't even have anyone sitting in the seat next to me on the plane, a luxury I appreciated even more when we hit several patches of turbulence and I held onto my armrests with a white-knuckled death grip. I don't enjoy bumpy plane rides the way I used to when I was a kid.

We had beautiful weather for our drive.

We stopped along the road at one point so Amanda could get some video of the crazy sparkle landscape. We put the hazards on so we'd be more visible. Two kind-hearted souls stopped to make sure we were OK. I hope we didn't induce any pangs of conscience in all the other folks who drove on by.

It was supposed to snow all weekend, but it didn't. Here's the view from the living-room window of our place.

Here's Ketchum...

where I found this vintage wool rug at the thrift store. According to the tag, it was imported via New York from Poland. We had spectacular success at the thrift stores in Hailey and Ketchum and acquired an embarrassment of affordable riches.

We gathered our strength here, at Grumpy's. I'd give you the link to the website, but they don't have one. They don't even have a phone.

They do have good hamburgers. And $5 32-oz. schooners of beer at happy hour, which it just happened to be when we arrived. I didn't finish it, if you were wondering.

We shopped, we ate, we read, we drank tea, we watched The Bourne Supremacy on cable while Amanda made a necklace, and of course we worked on our various projects (I brought along an essay I've been working on sporadically since the summer.) It was the best birthday present ever.

Shaun told me to shop for a house while we were there, but I didn't get to that.

I thought nothing could be more beautiful than the drive there, but I was wrong.

The drive back was.