To Idaho or Bust!
To Idaho or Bust!
This is the first blog in the series. My original blog did not have subtitles and I added a few, and it also contains pictures that are not included here. You can see the original here.
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While discussing the possibilities of moving to Idaho, I heard a multitude of outlandish comments from interested parties about the prospect. “Are you going into potato farming?” and “Is THAT in the United States?” to name just a few. People from the Southeast know very little about Idaho, which I guess isn’t surprising. I know we didn’t know a thing up to just a few years ago.
It’s approximately 2,600 miles from the front door of my old abode to my new one. I did the “research” prior to moving, of course, but there’s nothing like living somewhere, even for a little while, to bring out the real differences.
Why Idaho?
I’m sure you’re also asking, “Why Idaho?”, “Why so far away?" The answers for that are myriad, but I’ll state just two. Family and location. Yes, location. My husband and I have spent most of our lives in humid, mosquito-infested Florida and we were both ready for a change. We also felt that if we didn’t make the change soon, it was likely to never happen. I’d looked at ups and downs of Idaho weather for the last few years and it just didn’t seem that bad to us. Almost no humidity in the summer, an actual change of seasons in the spring and fall, and what, to me, looked like a moderate winter. Cold, sure, but much, much warmer than a lot of other places at approximately the same latitude. The way it looked to me, their "average" winter day was Florida’s "cold” days. The big difference was that instead of lasting two or three days, it would last for three months. No big deal. Also, snowfall. Yes, it got snowfall. In actuality, Idaho received most of it’s precipitation in the form of snowfall, but it generally didn’t get more than a few inches at a time. We could handle that!
The Modern-Day Oregon Trail
Based on this premise, we packed up our house (which equated to throwing away more than we took, out of both want and necessity and even then it took more than a week longer to pack than we projected), loaded up the animals (two dogs and three cats), and began our journey to the Northwest. Our own, personal game of Oregon trail, giving up pretty much everything we had for what we hoped would be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the only major differences being Motel 6’s instead of sleeping below the open sky, a moving truck and van instead of oxen and covered wagons, and no need to worry about dysentery or cholera, though there was enough fatigue and back aches to go around.
How Long?
The trip took almost five days. We probably could have made it in four if it wasn’t for our van mimicking Noah’s Ark with three drugged cats and a dog who sat in my face panting for most of the trip, and my skittishness about driving after dark. Our trip to Idaho took us through nine states: Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Utah. The trip took us a lot farther north before it turned west than I thought it would, and there were several states I thought we were bound for, primarily Kansas and Colorado, that we completely missed. During our trip, we drove over mountains (at one point reaching over 8,000 feet) and through tunnels. We passed through the home of Bluegrass, Nashville, passed by the historical Jack Daniel’s Distillery and Metropolis, Illinois, fictitious home of Superman, and through St. Louis, Missouri, home of the largest arch in the world. The scariest part of the trip by far was through St. Louis, on a road in the middle of the city with barriers on both sides and a cat who decided it was time to curl up under my feet. Time to pop the Xanax. It was my job during most of the trip to follow the moving van pulling a car which was scary in itself, watching it constantly sway in to the other lanes. I knew for sure that it would sway at just the inopportune time and swipe a car or other truck.
We picked up most of our meals at truck stops and gas stations and kept going. We couldn’t dare go in to eat anywhere and leave the animals in a closed car during the August heat. Despite everything, however, the trip was pretty uneventful, save the right mirror of the moving truck that was clipped by a passing truck. We arrived at dusk on the last Monday of August at our new home in a suburb of Boise Idaho in Southwest Idaho. We checked out our new home, stayed in a hotel for one additional night, and woke up the next morning ready to unpack the truck and begin our new life. We knew it would be different from where we had just left. To that, there was no doubt, but it really is like a whole other country. Throughout the blogs that follow, those differences will be pointed out in glorious detail.
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