Travel Bug - Idaho - Potato State

It is hard for me to not travel! Only thing i guess i look forward in life is to travel to new places, see different culture/lifestyle and try new cuisines. 

Honestly admitting, I am not a fan of group travel to new places because that limits the flexibility of how I plan to explore the city. My small family fits the need of my travel in most sense. One of my vacation last year was to an unusual state - Idaho. It is not a very tourist famous state, however i must say that, it has been one of my best experience so far. I dont want to see a crowded place and take a selfie or a family pic and put it on facebook to show the world. I would rather enjoy the places that has many things to offer, isnt crowded and allows to take a selfie/pic for facebook ;)

As always we preferred driving down rather than flying and covered the length & breadth of the state in a week due to its proximity from Oregon. 

We drove for about 8 hrs to our first stop Mccall lake front, there was a nice live band playing. It was a wonderful place to hang out for drinks. Spent our evening enjoying and when it started to get cold we started for our night stop that was in Boise. Boise is just like any other big city with tall buildings, same stores and offices. 

Next day, we headed towards Bruneau Dunes state park. The idea was to try sand boarding, something we had never done before. It was a perfect sunny day to practice, we rented the boards and drove towards the sand dunes, saw some adults & kids trying it and it seemed like they were having fun. We parked our car, and started climbing the dune to get to some elevation, it wasnt fun! Climbing up is always painful no matter what. This one in particular as when you put your feet in sand, it slides down leaving you with no grip and making you put more energy to carry yourself further. After we reached some height (not at top) it was time to try the board. 

Don't know about other humans, but I always start with an assumption that I am pro and wait for reality to hit me! When i sand boarded, I slided smooth for first 15 seconds and being a novice I did not know which direction the body weight needs to be adjusted for continuity, so when my sand board needed me to adjust, i applied the wrong logic and next 30 seconds were rolling down the sand dune. It did not hurt all, only felt a little embarrassed. "Dont give up" my inner voice said to me and i climbed up again but only to put myself in more embarrassment. I tried third time and results were great, i was rolling much better! I tried and tried until my body & soul told me "Give up"! 

Why am I not in pic? I was already rolling down when camera clicked!

What better excuse can i have than saying "It became very hot & we were dehydrated". Returned the rented gear to the state park officials and told them it was fun. It indeed was fun if you minus the embarrassment. Our next destination was Twin Falls that was couple of hours drive. We grabbed lunch and drove endlessly. Best part of Summers is that the days are really long, giving more time to explore. I had researched the place and a blogger had highly recommended a restaurant to try "Elevation 486". It is a wonderful place to enjoy lunch with a very beautiful backdrop. We also were privileged to attend a wedding that happened 10 feet from where we sat and saw the whole ceremony take place. Did not want to leave until "I do" and "You may kiss the bride" was said. Our first experience of an American wedding that we were not attending but yet attending! 

We loved the place so much that we also had next day dinner to see how it looked in the night!

Elevation 486, Drink - Snake River Special

Next morning we went to check out Shoshone waterfall. It supposedly is Niagara of West, and they posters said it is higher than Niagara falls. I doubt but then who am i to question ;)

Shoshone Waterfalls

The last day before we started was reserved for White Water Rafting, my son is a water baby and loved every minute of it. He was enjoying class III rapids to my surprise. He wanted to do it on every trip he said!

There were only two weird thing that happened in the entire trip. One we did not see any diversity at all, we looked like aliens everywhere. Two, for some weird reasons, the restaurants in small towns kept the doors locked from inside and opened only after they saw from the glass who it was to let in. 

I loved the change in landscape!

Beautiful landscape of Idaho!

Color People - Welcome but not really!

When i used to hear about the racism, it all used to sound so weird. How can people think so low in in 21st century? It must not be true! Must be one of the media way of blowing things out of proportion to gain the TRPs.

I moved to the America's whitest city. Undoubtedly, a most wonderful experience in life - People so courteous, polished, law abiding, good at small talks and so non-interfering. Just looked a perfect world to me.

Perfect is so superficial! What lies beneath is an unimaginable horror. A subtle color discrimination exists even after creation of 100000 laws. You can counter everything that is written and said, but what do you do to things that are implicit. If you are not in STEM, you are 100% likely to experience it here in every form.

Its not about old punks but the new generation still dragging the shit and passing on to next generations as if it were a treasure!

My 4 year old started his pre-school. One evening he comes back and tells about his new learning from school - Its Peach! Not the fruit but the color peach. It was difficult for me to comprehend as to why teacher would move away from basic colors (Blue/Yellow/Green/Red) to a complex one as Peach. On further probing, he mentioned that his skin color is Peach, either kids are brown, black or white but he is peach. I was dumbstruck! I thought it was more appropriate for me to not encourage a discussion on skin color and make him learn the unwanted stuff.

The next time, we were in a park when I saw an older kid walking ahead of us. I told my son, to go say hello to him and play with him. My son looked at the kid and tells me - "Ohh do you mean that brown kid?" It was an Afrikan American kid. I was stunned the way color was making its way. It was definitely above and beyond the inquisitiveness of mind!I knew the very moment that it was time to make him understand things. I corrected my child and hopefully he will not repeat but out there are more kids who will grow the color schematics.

Wish there were more means to corrections of thought processes in the world! Perhaps some day..

Its all about Pain

The funny thing about Pain is - "Pain is not painful if you have spent some considerable time in it!"
Its Overrated in the beginning and underrated towards the end!

Another 30+ learning...

Have things changed?

When i published the previous post, i went to view how my blog looked like...i had changed the color, layout, fonts, pics & heading so many times in past. 

I started reading couple of old posts of mine and realised i had written some of them 10 years back...its really been long....i was wondering if its blogger that changed or is it me?

Why do i sound so different in those post? i can feel from the writings that i was young and carefree...i dont sound same any more...i still revisit my "hall of shame", i still do silly things, i still drop things clumsily and i still laugh at myself, but its still not the same!

i dont mind being stupid again, it was fun and i will trade off anything to be back in the same time...

and the year went by...

A girl who had it in her fate to move every 2-3 years from any location had finally thought that the stability arrived in her life as she managed to stay in one city for almost 7 years in a  row. The exception to the rule was it was not in the same house, trend of moving to new houses continued at the same pace.  As she fought with her destiny to not move from the city atleast, destiny decided to apply full force by throwing a stronger dislocation.

Yep i wouldnt call it a relocation. Relocation is always for a reason and may have a positive side to it (may not be the happy one though), on the contrary dislocation is when you arent sure what happened to you and why you moved.

I am not saying i wasnt aware of where i was going or i was forced to move, my fight and reasoning is to myself this time. I keep questioning myself - if what i did is what i expected to do in my life?

Exactly an year back, i left my country to move to states...i am still waiting to put an acceptable reason to it and move on in life by giving myself an excuse - "Atleast this good happened out of this!"

 It is definitely a bitter sweet experience to relocate at this stage...Its not about the age, but the stage!