Mr. Karen and I were out in Idaho again last week. Unlike last trip, we flew out. We lucked out and got one side of a row to ourselves on both flights. On our long layover in Minneapolis, we hung out in the observation deck and had lunch at a place we hadn’t tried before (which was out of two of the four side dish choices, unfortunately my top two). We picked up our truck at the airport in Spokane, where it had been hanging out in long term parking (the lot is within easy walking distance of the terminal and only costs $6 a day—ah, the perks of a smaller airport). We made stops at Lowe’s and Del Taco in Coeur d’Alene on our way to the mountain; there was no rush as we’d already missed the fireworks and torchlight parade that were on that night as part of the mountain’s Winter Carnival (not to be confused with the town’s Winter Carnival, which is in February this year). When we got to the condo, I was happy to see that my tape job on the broken window had held. I was also happy to get to bed, what with the three-hour time difference.

There hadn’t been a lot of new snow since our last visit but what was there had held up pretty well. We skied Sunday and Monday, but ended up taking Tuesday off, as that’s the day the guy came to measure the broken window and by the time he left we’d decided that we weren’t that excited to ski another day on the same snow so did projects around the condo instead. I sewed up a rip in Mr. Karen’s old bibs, which he wears on sunny days so his new bibs will last longer (the “sun bibs” were once black but now are a sort of weathered brownish grey). He installed the baseboard heater we’d picked up at Lowe’s on our way from the airport (we had to special order it because it’s an unpopular size; we tried to get it from Home Depot, which is a lot more convenient to the condo, but they’ll only let you order things for store pickup that are stocked in the store, which seems strange to me—if the store had them, I’d just go buy one). We cooperated to hang some new posters and art, relocating my old favorite, the chicken, in the process. On Wednesday, when there still wasn’t any fresh snow, we mixed things up by taking our oldest skis onto the hill and having a “retro day”. We had some of the longest, most pointy skis on the mountain, for sure. Wednesday night the clouds rolled up and we got a little fresh snow for Thursday. Friday there was more snow, but it was so warm that at the lowest elevation it was pretty much rain, which meant we got pretty soggy by the end of the day. It was still fun, of course. Saturday looked to be a much drier day, with a bit more fresh snow, but we had to head home so missed out. Ah well, there’ll be another trip.

The whole photoset for the trip is here