Girls Just Wanna Have Fun (Part 1)

In 1863 the town of Lewiston, Idaho became the capital of the newly-discovered Idaho territory. On December 7, 1864 a resolution was passed by the Idaho Territorial Legislator to move the capital from Lewiston to Boise. In 1865 the move was made and Boise is now the capital of the state of Idaho. On August 22, 2008, I visited Boise.I really hadn't been anywhere other than the northern part of our state. My friend Val is going to school in Boise, and when she asked my friend Michelle and I to drive down with her and spend a weekend exploring, we jumped at the opportunity!

It was certainly a looooong car ride, but fun in its own way. The poor car probably had way more stuff in it than it ever should have held, but it did a good job getting us from home to Boise safely. The drive took us about 9 hours, including time for lunch in the parking lot at WalMart in Pendleton, Oregon. It was a beautiful drive! Instead of driving straight down through the middle of Idaho we went over to Eastern Washington, down through beautiful Eastern Oregon (Oregon is one of the prettiest states I've ever been to, I have decided!) and eventually we re-entered Idaho, changing time zones somewhere along the way. We even passed the "45th Parallel," which meant we were half-way between the equator and the North Pole. :-)
The three of us are very good friends and we have been for about 4 or 5 years, and so even though the drive was entirely too long and a bit cramped, we enjoyed the time for "girl talk" and singing along to the Phantom of the Opera and Enchanted soundtracks, and whatever Val had on her iPod, including some of David Archuleta's studio versions from American Idol. :-)

We arrived in Boise and unloaded Val's stuff. She is staying with her cousin and his wife, so Michelle and I helped her arrange stuff in her new room. After dinner and unpacking we eventually went to bed, where Michelle and I, sharing an air mattress in a guest room, talked late into the night. Yeah, we're girls. :-)

Saturday was spent exploring, but our main mission was to visit the Boise State University campus and find all of Val's classrooms and pick up her very-expensive-and-overpriced textbooks. I found the campus facinating to explore because it is so different from what I am used to here. I hadn't been on a large school campus before, so it was interesting! The campus at Boise State is beautiful with lots of old red-brick buildings.

After exploring the school and finding all the classroom buildings were locked, we ventured across the street to eat lunch at Baja Fresh, which is somewhere I have not eaten since I was visiting California in 2005. No, we don't have them up north -- but we should! My tostada was delicious.

One thing I *really really* wanted to do in Boise was see the state capital. I have seen (but not been in) the California state capital in Sacramento, so I thought it would be neat to see the Idaho capital in Boise! Unfortunately we could not go inside as they are doing renovations that will not be complete until 2010 or so, but the outside was amazing.

Hot, tired and thirsty we headed back out of the city to do some shopping in nearby Meridian. Old Navy was a stop at the top of my list, but, unfortunately, I did not find anything this time. We also went to Marshall's, which is another store I haven't seen since California, and then we visited Ross and, of course, WalMart. After eating dinner at Pizza Hut and driving by one of the Boise Great Harvest Bread Company's (unfortunately it was closed!), we headed "home" to eat some fruit we bought, and to rest. However, we had spotted a little gelato and frozen yogurt shop down the street, so we eventually headed back out for ice cream before it got dark. The ice cream store was right next door to Kohl's. . .so of course we had to stop there, too!

Eventually we did decide to call it a night. . .but oh, we had a fun day!

. . .to be continued. . .