Snowcation in Boise, Idaho | Day 3
Valentine’s Day | Sunday, February 14, 2021
If I thought yesterday was a beautiful morning, the sunrise that painted the mountaintops on day three left me in complete awe. Chris and I wrapped ourselves tightly in blankets and braced the bitter cold to stare at the colors as they moved and faded over the peaks. He sat on a chair and I curled up on his lap, both our blankets making an insulated pocket of body heat. My glasses fogged over as I breathed. The air was so still, so quiet, and the morning felt sacred. We sat for a long time in silence, until pink turned to gray and our toes begged for relief from the cold.
Coming downstairs, we made breakfast and coffee, then spent some quiet time in prayer together, side by side. I gazed out the window at the mountains and read the Liturgy of the Hours, contemplating the state of my soul and journaling. When we’d finished, we curled up and looked at a Boise tourism magazine together, laughing at a headline called “Wooly Bash,” a sheep parade!
The original plan was to clear out quickly and head to 11AM Mass in Boise, but we found out that our flight was cancelled due to bad weather in Dallas and Houston. This was a blessing in disguise, as it gave us more time to spend at the cabin together, and we could go to a later Mass without feeling rushed.
It was sad to leave, and I made sure to take some last-minute photos of the AirBnB to cherish, and soak in the views one last time. We loaded up the Jeep and took it down the mountain—this time being far less terrifying than the first, one: because the dirt road had been shoveled, and two: because Chris had gotten the hang of driving on the switchbacks.
When we got into Boise, we went through the drive-through coffee shop Dutch Bros, which brought us both back to separate memories in Arizona. We picked up our rental car for the extra time we’d be there, rescheduled our flight for the morning, and dropped off the Jeep. By then, it was nearly 6PM, so we made our way to the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist—a beautiful church where we celebrated Sunday Mass.
After Mass we got dinner at a restaurant called Eureka! where the wait was long but the food was well worth it. We shared fried mac ‘n’ cheese balls, and I had a fig jam goat cheese burger that melted in my mouth. Full and exhausted, we went to our hotel for the night, shivering on our way under city lights sparkling with swirls of falling snow. We watched a bit of Ant Man & The Wasp, then went to bed, ready for an early flight the following morning.
