idaho, part deux

the day started bright and early (and with a nice chill in the air) with a hearty breakfast at ihop (chicken fajita omelet for me, funnel cake platter for L) and starbucks (venti iced vanilla latte for me, water for L) and a 30-minute drive through the mountains to a train station for our morning adventure. the scenic train ride went up through the mountains (no real big uphill or downhill sections) along the payette river. there were old west 19th century actors aboard the train and their ongoing drama sketch included a chained bank robber, a bounty hunter, a marshall, a gambler, a bad banker, some rogue cowboys, and some travelling ladies. the drama ended in a shootout over all the money on the train after the robber stole a gun and turned up to be in cahoots with the "bad guys" on the train. the shootout didn't end too well for the good guys (which included the gambler :-D ) as seen below for the marshall. however, it didn't end too well for the bad guys either as the women stole all the money while the bad guys were tending to the dead good guys.

the train returned a little after noon and since we were already north of boise a good ways, we decided to drive straight west in order to visit oregon. the scenic drive was nice and almost as fast as the interstate (though those have a speed limit of 75!!). we had lunch at a really well done, family owned pizza and pasta place in the first city across the oregon border (ontario, or).

on our way back we stopped in nampa, id to drive around the campus of northwest nazarene university. there are 8 nazarene universities in the u.s. (and the one seminary in kc) and i've now been to 4 of them (trevecca in nashville, olivet near chicago, mid america near kc, and northwest in nampa). we'd definitely like to visit two soon (point loma in san diego and eastern in boston), but i don't know when we'll take the time to visit the other two (southern in ok, mt. vernon in oh (past columbus, oh)).

instead of going to the hotel and getting a nap while we could, we went on back into boise to an outdoor store downtown so lindsay could continue to look for a nice pair of chaco sandals that we'd been periodically stopping to look for on saturday. she found some good ones and wore them the rest of the trip because they were so comfortable. after that we stopped by boise state university and i took the previously posted picture. we dropped by an outlet mall nearby and wandered around for a while before we realized that if we wanted to see a movie like we had considered that we had better get a move on!

we found a really cool "entertainment" area where an imax, a 25 some odd screen theater, restaurants, and small shops all connected by an outdoor strolling area with benches and a fountain. we got tickets to the movie and popped in some of the shops where we ended up buying a hand painted ceramic vase that was really unique. the shop ("artist for a day") allowed you to buy unpainted ceramics and paint them in the shop with their supplies (great first date idea), but they also happened to have some finished pieces for sale that people never picked up. we were still kind of full from the pizza and calzone at lunch so we went on to see wedding crashers. it was pretty funny if you disregard the few scenes that give it an r rating. some parts in the second half were dumb and time wasting (sorry will ferrell), but overall it was pretty funny. after the movie we stopped in at the sports bar by the theater and had some late nite wings and skins before returning to crash at the hotel.

sunday is pretty easy to describe - we got up early, got the car returned, hopped on a 4 hour flight to atlanta, lost two hours going back to eastern time, piddled and ate a long lunch at tgi friday's during our 2-3 hour layover and had that short hop flight back to knoxville. we got back to l's parents at about 5:30p and jake was really excited to see us (as we were to see him). he had had a blast chasing the dog and going to a kiddie pool birthday party on saturday. we had a lil bit of dinner and visited with family before heading out at about 8:00p to drive 3 hours back home to lex. i was pretty much a zombie at work monday morning, but it was really a great trip.

updated map of where i've been:


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