After a brief return to California for visits with family and friends we headed to our next home outside Santa Fe, New Mexico. We traveled along old Route 66 and made a few stops along the way. We especially enjoyed another night’s stay at La Posada, the old restored Harvey House in Winslow, Arizona. Now we’re settled into New Mexico for the winter.
Tiana’s mother, Marilyn, took us to the Basque Block in downtown Boise. Marilyn is of Basque descent and shared a lot about Basque culture and history. We started with lunch at a lively Basque restaurant bustling with the lunch crowd, Bar Gernika, with an interesting list of taps:
Firestone Walker Sticky Monkey Quad
Deschutes The Abyss 2018 Imp Stout
Barley Brown’s Handtruck Pale
Kostritzer Schwartzbier
New Belgium Trippel
Sockeye Christmas Kriek (Sour)
Boulevard American Kolsch                                                 Lost Grove First Sight IPA
After lunch we went to the Basque Museum and the associated boarding house next door. There is a large Basque community in Idaho and Northern Nevada and you see their influence throughout the region.
Not to be outdone by Times Square, Boise has its own New Years Eve Celebration, the Idaho Potato Drop. Held in the park adjacent to the State Capitol, a huge replica of a potato is dropped from a crane at the stroke of midnight. There is live entertainment all afternoon and evening. We attended the raising of the potato at 6 PM but not the midnight festivities. It was already cold at 6 PM.
Andy stayed with us for a couple of extra days after Christmas and we visited the Old Idaho Penitentiary. It was in use for over 100 years beginning in 1872 and it is now an historical site. It was very interesting to see how the prisoners lived. The conditions were brutal; it was not a pleasant place.
We began the Christmas weekend with a nighttime visit to the Winter Garden aGlow at the Idaho Botanical Garden. The garden is outfitted with an amazing display of holiday lights and it is a popular winter attraction in Boise.
We spent Christmas with Tiana’s family at their ranch home outside of Boise. Everyone had a good time, including the animals!
We headed on to Boise to spend Christmas there with Andy and with Tiana’s family. We had never been to Boise and we were very pleasantly surprised. It is a beautiful, vibrant little city. We rented an old Victorian house (built in 1903) in the Hyde Park section of Boise’s North End. The neighborhood, just north of downtown, is filled with beautiful old houses and we enjoyed long walks there.
It snowed a couple of days before Christmas and the snow stayed on the ground for the remainder of our stay in Boise. The Christmas decorations in the neighborhood were beautiful in the snow.
On our way to Idaho for Christmas we crossed Nevada on U.S. 50, the loneliest road in America. The drive is over 100 miles between Fallon and Austin and there are few traces of human activity along the way.
Austin is a tiny town in the middle of Nevada which swelled to over 10,000 people during a silver boom in the late 1800s. Now the 21st century has left it behind and it is struggling to stay afloat. There are several beautiful churches and homes in Austin, left over from the silver boom years.
Eureka is a bit more prosperous than Austin but it also has a number of shuttered old buildings.
We spent the night in Elko had had a Basque dinner at the Star Hotel, a Basque tradition for over 100 years. The restaurant was only a couple of blocks from Elko’s red light district (brothels are legal in Nevada). We couldn’t resist a photo of “Inez’s Dancing & Diddling.”
We celebrated Andy’s birthday at Open Studios in Berkeley. Local artists open their studios, located in an old bakery building, for the public to see where they create their art. They have artwork for sale, also. We ended the day with drinks at the Sierra Nevada Torpedo Room and then dinner at Rivoli.
We arrived back in Northern California for a week and celebrated Andy’s birthday. We stayed at a Hilton extended stay property, Homewood Suites, in Cordelia. Just to the northwest of the hotel was a beautiful neighborhood that incorporated walking/biking trails throughout. Taking daily walks there through the chaparral was a dream!
Our journey west ended in Paso Robles, CA, where we joined long-time friends for a few days. We started our visit with a lovely dinner followed by a tour of the Derby Winery the next day. Carrie was happy that the party included two friendly cats, Buff and Bama, who came to Paso Robles with their mama because Ojai, CA was evacuated due to the massive Thomas Fire.
