Boise

We arrived in Boise late on a July afternoon, expecting a functional Western capital and a quick night’s sleep before pushing on. Instead, Lia rolled the car window down at a stoplight and we both smelled cut grass and river water, and somebody in the next car waved at us for no reason at all. We ended up cancelling the onward booking. There are cities you visit and cities that quietly ask you to stay a little longer, and this one, all cottonwood shade and easy nods from strangers, did the second thing.

The Greenbelt and the River

The Boise River runs straight through the middle of town, and the locals have wrapped it in a ribbon of path called the Greenbelt that we walked, then biked, then walked again. On the hottest afternoon we watched a slow parade of people float past on inner tubes, beers wedged in cup-holders they had somehow attached to rubber, drifting from Barber Park down toward Ann Morrison. Lia wanted to join them immediately. We rented tubes the next day and spent two hours doing nothing but rotating gently in the current, ducking under bridges, the Boise Foothills turning gold above the tree line. I have rarely felt a city trust its river the way Boise does.

Old Boise and the Basque Block

I did not know, before we came, that Boise holds one of the largest Basque communities outside the Old Country. On a short stretch of Grove Street the sidewalk is painted with a red-and-green mural, and the Basque Museum sits beside the oldest brick building in the city. We ate at Leku Ona that night, croquetas and a bottle of Rioja, and the owner told Lia in a mix of English and Euskara that his grandfather had herded sheep in these very foothills. Being French, I felt a strange kinship, that same stubborn thread of an old European culture holding on far from home. Afterward we wandered the downtown grid, past the sandstone Idaho State Capitol glowing softly, and shared a scoop of huckleberry ice cream because you cannot leave Idaho without tasting huckleberry.

Up into the Foothills

On our last morning we drove up to Table Rock before the heat came. The trail is dust and sagebrush, the smell of it sharp and resinous once the sun hits, and at the top there is a plain white cross and a view that unrolls the whole valley. We sat on the warm sandstone and picked out the river we had floated, the pale dome of the Capitol, the far blue haze of the Owyhees. Lia said it looked like a town that had decided, collectively, not to be in a hurry. Below us a pair of trail runners passed, and of course they waved.

Getting There

Boise Airport (BOI) sits barely ten minutes from downtown, with direct flights from most Western hubs, so you can be tubing the river within the hour. We came by car off Interstate 84, an easy drive from Salt Lake City or the Oregon high desert. Downtown is genuinely walkable and the Greenbelt makes a bike the smartest way to get around, so skip the car once you arrive. Come in June or September if you can, when the foothills are green or gold and the afternoons stop just short of scorching.