Don't bad-talk Bobcats' bowl destination; Idaho's the best

A lot of Ohio University Bobcat fans have been grousing about the football team having to play this year's bowl game in Boise, Idaho.

Complaints have been aired about the distance (at 2,063 miles, it's a measly 8.28 percent of the 24,906-mile distance around the world); climate (the sun actually shines on consecutive days in the Rocky Mountain West); the football field (true, there's nothing good one can say about Bronco Stadium's blue turf); the bowl's name (ditto the cheesy monicker, "Famous Idaho Potato Bowl"); and the destination in general.

The game is Saturday at 5:30 p.m. on ESPN, so if you're not inclined for a quick weekend trip to Idaho, playing couch potato instead of Idaho potato is a perfectly understandable choice.

However, if you'd like to visit one of the nicer places the great American West has to offer, you can do far worse than Boise.

How do I know?

Well, for nearly three years in the early '80s, I worked for a small newspaper in a ski resort town 100 miles north of Boise. While there, I met my future (and current) wife, and occasionally visited Boise for shopping and to escape the cold and snow. While that's a very long time ago, things don't change very quickly in the Famous Potato State, and I'm quite confident most of this stuff still applies.

Here's what you should know about Boise and the surrounding area:

Most Idahoans aren't thrilled about being associated with potatoes. The potatoes I ate while in Idaho weren't any different than the potatoes I've eaten anywhere else, and I didn't eat any more of them there.

Many Easterners assume Idaho is one of those vowel-heavy Midwestern states, with potato pastures rolling eternally into the horizon. Idaho is very much not located in the Midwest; rather it's a Rocky Mountain state situated between Montana and Oregon-Washington. It has some of the most rugged mountain terrain in the world, and more designated wilderness than any other state besides Alaska. If you travel to Boise for the Ohio-Utah State matchup, do yourself a favor and book a few extra days, then travel up into the mountains. As one drives north from Boise on Idaho Rt. 55, the ugly, bare foothills gradually start sporting a pine tree here, another one there, a grove on that hillside, more up ahead, until it's all pines, all the time, with mountains rising far above on each side of the highway. For many miles, the road follows the white-water Payette River, whose source is the ski town of McCall (where I worked). McCall anchors the north end of one of the prettiest mountain valleys you'll ever see.

The mountains shelter numerous natural hot springs, some of them public, some of them not. Back in the day, clothing was optional, though I suspect that's changed in this uptight era. The one I remember, Gold Fork Hot Springs, was located on Boise-Cascade land, and featured wooden benches, a small waterfall, and a grove of tamaracks across the road that glowed golden in the fall. Volunteers took care of the hot-spring pool, and though it was self-policed, there were few rules or restrictions. Boise-Cascade paper company, worried about liability issues, wound up dynamiting it. The dirty rotten bastards.

You probably will not stumble over white supremacists in Idaho, even though it has acquired that regrettable reputation over the decades, due to a few Aryan Nation-type groups that settled in northern Idaho. But it's a big state, and one can live for years there without meeting up with anybody who belongs to a hate group. I'd venture to guess that Ohio, with its surplus of home-grown weirdos, has more neo-Nazis than Idaho does.

However, like anywhere in the American West, you will stumble over quite a few hardcore right-wingers, and the years when Idaho was known for moderate politics (the legendary U.S. Sen. Frank Church was from Idaho) are long gone.

Once in Idaho, prepared to tell people you're from Ohio, "not Iowa," the same way you would get confused if you met someone from Idaho ("not Iowa") here in Ohio.

Boise is not a bitterly cold place in the winter. In fact, its average high temperatures are 4 degrees warmer than Athens, and its average lows are about the same as here. It gets 20.7 inches less precipitation per year than we do in Athens. When I lived in McCall-Cascade, farther north and about a mile in altitude, we would flee the extended, bitterly cold, snowy winters by trekking to balmy Boise to visit the malls and big-box stores that we didn't have up in the mountains.

People in Idaho say "You bet" all the time. It was so noticeable that my first column for the Central Idaho Star-News focused on this linguistic phenomenon. My future wife enjoyed the column and decided she'd like to meet me. Our two daughters are retroactively happy about this turn of events.

Idaho is a schizophrenic state in that the northern half is touristy and relatively progressive (by Western standards), and the southern half is rock-ribbed conservative (and mostly Mormon). The Boise area is right about at the dividing line.

My favorite Idaho saying: "Idaho, where men are men and sheep are lying little tramps." Politically incorrect but funny all the same.

Good luck, Bobcats!