Day 24 (4/24)
Oh Boise!
We left early with a long drive ahead of us. Soldier Summit (7500 ft) is about halfway from Price to where we would pick up I-15 in Spanish Fork. When we stopped there for gas I had to knock icy snow off the pump handle. That it was under an overhang testifies to the strength of the wind. But the road was clear and dry and in a little over an hour we were on the outskirts of Provo and on the interstate. For the next 120 miles, we never left urban freeway, driving past Provo, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Brigham City until we finally turned off to the northwest on I-84.
This road was obviously less traveled by, with much smoother pavement and less traffic. Connie took over driving with clear sailing ahead, uh . . . except for the wind. It had been hounding us off and on since New Mexico and – and this is really strange – it is always a cross wind and, no matter which direction we’re travelling, it blows from the left side. We traded back a couple of hours later and eventually arrived in Boise.
The Rice family had had a mini family reunion in Boise back in ’98. Nephew Nathan Guisinger and his girlfriend, Rachel, were there for the Boise Shakespeare Festival season and each had been cast individually for the roles of Romeo and Juliet. The play was performed while we were there and it was great fun seeing the two of them playing their parts. Downtown Boise was so small-town that we had no problem letting all the cousins (Megan, the oldest was 23 then) walk the several blocks to a downtown movie theater at night.
The city seems to have grown a bit in the intervening 18 years. And after a long hard drive, it was really just a stop on our way to Vancouver.