It’s a beautiful sunny Sunday in Northern Idaho. Currently 59 degrees with an expected high of 65. I am not unhappy avoid the sweltering climes further east. We are frequently asked, so how on earth did you end up with a house in Idaho? It’s a long story with lots of odd sidetracks to explore. Looking at the view out my window will answer some of them. Another is that I just hate hot humid weather, and they do not have that here. Yes, it’s colder than in PA with winters that tend to be cloudy and dreary and an average annual snowfall of nearly 70 inches. Not an issue for us since we spend winter back east. We are truly blessed to have these options. We are clearly not alone in wanting to be in this corner of the world. Coeur d’Alene was the hottest real estate market in the country last year, there is building everywhere, and real estate prices are crazy.

This year, for the first time, I am planning to spend the summer here. We will see how that goes. Usually, we go back and forth spending maybe a month here, back to PA for a bit, then back here again and so on. When you do that, you don’t get to feel part of the community, we know our neighbors, but really haven’t made other personal connections here. We also had been renting out the house through a local agency, which made sense before we retired but became more of an issue when a string of bad rental experiences badly upset the neighbors. We had always intended to phase that out and now that we have it is wonderful to be able to leave our belongings out when we leave and when we come back be able to find things in the kitchen where I left it. This year I can do some gardening, plant herbs and flowers, do some work on the landscaping; the types of things you need to be around to get done.

This is also a great location from which to explore the beautiful northwest. Glacier National Park is four hours away, Yellowstone less than 7, Seattle 5 hours, and we could be in Portland or Banff National Park in 6 hours or so. There a plenty of other less well-known things to see and do nearby. In terms of necessities Coeur d’Alene has shops, restaurants a hospital and all the other amenities 15 minutes from where I sit, depending on traffic of course, just like anywhere! Spokane, WA is 40 miles away which makes flying in and out (love these smaller airports) pretty easy.  

This morning as I took a walk around part of the lake, I was pondering the way that where and how you were brought up impacts your perception of location. Over 70% of Americans live in or near the town where they grew up, the average person in the US has been to no more than 12 states. If that is your experience, then even visiting Idaho sounds crazy. But I didn’t grow up that way. I have said before that I am a first-generation Yankee. My family has lived in Georgia and Alabama since they came over from Great Britain a couple of centuries ago. My parents met in high school, dad was drafted into the Army, married my mom, finished his electrical engineering degree at Georgia Tech, got a job with RCA (now General Electric) in New Jersey and that’s where I grew up. I thought that was just how it worked- go to college, get a job and go where that takes you. It was only when I went to college that I realized that wasn’t how everyone saw things. Many of my friends never seriously considered settling down anywhere other than near where they grew up. There is obviously nothing wrong with that, lots of positives in fact, but it is simply not my experience.

We also traveled when I was a kid, those long camping trips I wrote about in another blog post. Probably that 4-week summer trip in an un air-conditioned vehicle contributed to my dislike of hot weather. Anyway, I had been all across the country multiple times before I got out of high school. I saw lots of parts of the US that were great and some I was very happy to see in the rear-view mirror. Dad had been offered a job in California at one point and while he didn’t take it, I understood that those things were possible.

Our travels also revealed the differences in climate around the country, both the meteorological and the cultural. People really are nice in the Midwest; Californians are less buttoned up than north easterners. I remember loving Monterey California. So pretty, and it wasn’t hot. In most of the US, weather doesn’t vary much with a few hours distance. If I turn on a local Philadelphia news channel they show the weather in the Poconos, the city and the shore. That’s the Jersey shore BTW; they may cover the weather at the Delaware beaches, but other than using a different name for the coast it usually isn’t all that different. That is not the case on the west coast. When Rob and I moved to northern California for a few years, the realtor helping us find a place to live asked me what kind of weather I liked. Not something you get asked moving to most places. Well, she said, if you like cool weather but don’t mind some fog, you can live along the coast where on a summer day the temps may stay in the low 60s, if you like it hot, Livingston Valley where it may hit 100 (a dry heat of course), or a variety of other microclimates in between. At certain times of the year, you can ski one day in the Sierras a few hours away and go to the beach the next. At Pomona College in Southern California, where my daughter went, they have an annual ski-beach day, which is literally just what it sounds. Most of us don’t get to pick what weather we like and live there, but what a wonderful thing it is if you can!

Ok, so that’s it for today. I am doing a four-day Virtual Artisan Baking at Home with King Arthur cooking school this week. I will share pictures, but you are going to have to come out here if you want to eat any of it! Until next time, stay well.