Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Highlights from a Mad Dash: Idaho...



Idaho.

For the state with the lowest self-esteem, it ain’t that bad.

I hadn’t been back to Idaho in a few years and as we drove through eastern Idaho to our destination, I couldn’t help but think, “Wow. This is utter shit.”

I mean, there I was surrounded by right-wing, anti-wind-energy signs (seriously, kids?) and fireworks warehouses opened all year long. I felt like I was driving into a Republican’s wet dream!

But then, we reached Cascade, Idaho, which was rivers and mountains and deer and fresh air and blue skies and open meadows. Turns out, that’s also a Republican’s wet dream; they can’t wait to tear it down.

The irony here is that right about that time, I was JONESING for some pavement. Seriously, I was getting really home sick. I wanted a Starbucks and a freeway… sigh…

Cascade was our first prolonged stop. We spent a couple of days with Vicky’s family inside their lovely, little home. It was quite nice.

Our first morning there, I hit the road for an eight-mile jog. Little did I realize that at about 5,000 feet up and eight-mile jog is just about the worst thing you could do. And it was probably the cause of my migraine the next day that kept me in bed and in the dark. Fortunately, it didn’t stop me from enjoying the rest of that day.

We lunched in a little place called…


Gramma’s. Great name, huh? And that’s just what it’s like. It’s a little family place that serves a pretty good burger. What more can you ask for?

We trotted around town a bit until the 1950s-ness of it all wore thin. I mean, really, kids selling lemonade from roadside stands and teens hanging out at the soda shop. I felt like giving them heroin; it was just TOO CLEAN!

Then, someone got the idea we should go see The Lone Ranger, which was about the worst decision imaginable. The Lone Ranger is a movie with so much wrong with it, the crappy acting ain’t that bad. It shits on the source material, on logic, on taste, and on its viewers. It’s not a movie. It’s a sentence. It’s punishment. It was to movies what Cool Hand Luke’s was to food… I’ll get to that later.

The Lone Ranger may also have caused my migraine… odds are, it did.

We soon left Idaho, on our way to Washington…

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