Boise

We left Oregon on Monday, headed to Idaho. We are staying at Country Corner RV Park just north of Boise in Caldwell. Nice place. It is about a mile from I-84 so it is remarkably quiet, unusual for a traditional RV park. There are obviously a number of long term residents, but the place is clean and orderly. It was a long drive so we just ate some pre-cooked food from Trader Joe’s. It was, as usual, lovely.

Tuesday we were very lazy. I made a full recipe of puffy pancakes instead of the half recipe I usually make because I wasn’t thinking when I looked at the recipe! It was tasty though.  Once we ate breakfast we decided to visit the Boise Zoo. Interesting little place almost right downtown along the river. The weather was a bit cool in the shade, but these three seem to be frozen.

Not quite life size, but close

Actually the zoo had lots of statuary all through it, though I didn’t get any other pictures. It was interesting how so many of the animals were lounging   the sunniest spot in their areas.

The African exhibit was interesting in that it included interpretations that included the people of the area. There was, among other spots, a section of recreated village and a safari camp set up.

As a long time tent camper, the set up was interesting. Lots of furniture inside the tents.

In general, the zoo still had many of their animals in far too small exhibits though they had done as much as their limited space allowed to improve. They obviously cared about their animals and conservation, but it was still rather sad. I think that is the reason I didn’t take many pictures.

Today we took the Viking Opal 650 sewing machine to a technician in Boise. It has become really hard to change needles. The tech worked on it a bit, but says I probably need a new part, and he didn’t have one. I can get needles in and out with some effort, so I will just wait until I get back to Iowa to get it really fixed. It seems like some kind of an assembly error.

We also ate lunch at the same Boise Basque restaurant we at in the last time we were here: Bar Gernika. It is a small place next to the Basque museum and heritage center. It advertises Basque comfort food, and the lamb grinders we had were excellent. Nice selection of brews too, but the star was the flan! I have never in my life had such silky flan. Luckily our server also does some of the cooking, and he helps make the flan. The key seems to be the sous vide cooking for 2 hours at 180. Since Kevin is always looking for good things to cook with the sous vide system, I am sure we are going to try this.

I also finished the mini-quilt for Lily’s carrier. I used a new technique for binding that uses invisible polyester thread. It looks nice, but I want to make sure we wash it every time we do laundry to make sure it lasts. Isn’t the fabric cute?

Tomorrow we are spending the night in Twin Falls, ID, then on to Salt Lake City.