blue and orange weekend.

Jason and I finally took a trip to Boise this past weekend with Rex, Jessica, and Jessica’s sister - Chelsea. We left Thursday night after classes and work and drove four hours to the nearby city of Mountain Home where Jessica’s parents live and where we would be staying for the next few nights.

Friday morning, we woke up to the smell of pancakes, sausage, and eggs made by Jessica’s parents. We headed to Boise early to pick up tickets to the BSU game on Saturday that Jason bought from Craigslist.

Jason and I had collected some information about a “Boise Art Walk” earlier in the week. The city is home to a surprising amount of public and historical art that can be found in the form of murals, postcards, bus stops, graffiti, statues, and interactive displays. We printed off the exact locations of 43 sites that could be found in downtown Boise. After we visited Boise’s’ City Hall, we started out with the goal of finding them all, but it ended up taking too much time so we only rushed to our favorites.

Hospitality at the Nez Perce (Lewis and Clark)

George Washington

City Hall and Abe Lincoln

While on our walk, we passed an alley filled with graffiti called “Freak Alley”. There were so many different paintings on the brick walls and doors and anything else that could be painted. At the end of the alley, we took a break for a slice of pizza at Pie Hole and quickly continued on our way. Side Note: We were surprised to see how many people were walking around with Blue and Orange on the day before the BSU game. 

Entrance to Freak Alley

Kilgore Trout

Penny Postcard: A Hometown Greeting

One of our favorite art sites was Patrick Zent’s “Homage to the Pedestrian.” This site is an interactive display of four lanterns spaced between a walkway in Grove Plaza. As people move along the walkway each lantern lights up and greets the passerby with rhythms of drums, bells, cymbals, and chimes. Rex, Jessica, Jason, and I each took a lantern and tried to dance to the corresponding sounds. We looked ridiculous to the actual pedestrians, but we had a good time making fools of ourselves.

Homage to the Pedestrian 

Alt. 1867 aka The Miner - made out of 2 Miles of barbed wire!

For dinner, we met up with Jessica’s parents at Tucano’s. I’ve never eaten at this restaurant and all I knew of it is that it involved a lot of meat and pineapple. I knew at least the boys would be happy for the meat. Me – I just wanted the pineapple. Tucano’s is an all-you-can-eat Brazilian restaurant where you are constantly served different types of food. At your table you have a wooden cylinder that is green on one end and red on the other and when you flip it to green, servers will bring you different kinds of meat that you can simply yay or nay. The meats vary from sausage, ham, teriyaki chicken, bacon wrapped turkey, steak, and chicken hearts. If you flip bthe cylinder to red, it means you need a break. The food was great and almost too filling. I suggest you go for lunch instead of dinner – the price is about 6 dollars cheaper for lunch.

Saturday was my favorite day! We woke up and began on our way back to Boise for the Boise State vs. Texas Christian University football game. Being a cheerleader through high school, the football stadium felt like a comfort zone. I hadn’t been to a game in a few years so I was very excited. We were all decked out in our Boise attire and super pumped. We didn’t have seats by Jessica and Rex because we had only recently bought our tickets and we were looking for the cheapest ones. Jason’s seat was actually right in front of mine, but we were still close enough to enjoy each other’s company. The game was so much fun! The fans were so into the game and had so much team spirit. I loved it! During time outs we bobbed our heads to The White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army and sang along to Neil Diamond’s Sweet Caroline. Our side of the stadium chanted “Boi-se!” and the other side of the stadium responded with “State!” It’s funny how you can go to a game and sit by complete strangers and end up high fiving them after every touchdown. Both teams played great throughout the entire game, but sadly TCU came out on top by one point when BSU failed to kick a 20-yard field goal at the last second – there goes Boise’s undefeated record. The game was still a blast and totally worth it! As a pick-me-up, the four of us went to Goodie’s nearby Hyde Park for some ice cream.

Sunday we headed back to Rexburg and on our way we stopped in Twin Falls. Entering the city, we drove over Perrine Bridge to see an amazing view of the Snake River Canyon that reminded me of The Land Before Time. We continued down the road stopping at a viewpoint to take pictures of the beautiful bridge and drove on to Shoshone Falls. Shoshone Falls is considered to be the Niagara of the West and is actually 45 feet higher than Niagara Falls. Of all the waterfalls that Jason and I have seen thus far together, I think this one is definitely the best. It was absolutely gorgeous, especially with a constant rainbow that connected the bottom of the falls to blue sky like a sideways smile. I loved peering over the ledge at the waterfall you could feel the mist from the falls on your face.

Overall the whole trip to Boise was a lot of fun and we are grateful for our friends Rex and Jessica for making it happen. Jason and I are already talking about when we can visit the city again.