Steven’s trip to Boise, Part 1

My brother Steven visited Callan and Chirstina, and sent me a 3-part email about it, complete with pictures. (Yes, you too can be famous – just send me a blog entry and I’ll be happy to post it.)

A clarification for new readers – Serenity is Callan’s nickname among family. So here it is, Installment 1 from Steven:

Hi Kristina,
I’ve been meaning to write to you about the very nice trip I had to visit Serenity and Chirstina’s in Boise the first weekend in June. I wanted to share some pictures, since I know you like that, which is what has delayed things a bit. That and my wanting to tell the complete story 🙂

I was really happy to finally get to see Serenity again, having been wanting to do that since before the pandemic, and was excited to meet Chirstina, too. The limiting factor, of course, was getting to Boise. So the story starts with plane tickets.

I’m not a big fan of Spirit, but found I couldn’t resist the option of $400 dollar tickets when every other carrier was $600+. So I bought a pair, with decent flight times, for June 8th-11th. That’s right, end week in June. Then, a few weeks after I bought them, I got an e-mail from Spirit saying that my return flight on the 11th had been cancelled, and I should rebook on their website. When I checked it out, I discovered that rebooking on another flight was not really an option, because there weren’t any – they had discontinued the entire route (or at least the return flights), effective about June 6th. So, I contacted them through their online chat, and after getting past the AI and only 2-3 hours of waiting for a representative, they were able to move the entire trip one week earlier, to June 1st-4th at no extra cost (although the return flight was now a redeye). So, not great, but not too bad.    

Another aspect of their cheap flight was no checked or carry-on baggage other than a personal item. One could add a carry-on, of course, but it would run around $150, so I realized it would be cheaper to stick with a personal item and just mail the larger items one way, or buy used ones online and ship them directly. Over the next few weeks two games, a camping mat and a sleeping bag arrived at Serenity’s house in Boise, and I carefully packed a rather large personal item which, to my gratification, did indeed fit in their 18″x14″x8″ box, as long as you stuffed it just right.

The day of the trip things started out well, as the photo proves, but then quickly went askew.  Shortly before my flight was scheduled to depart, Spirit suffered a systemwide computer failure and so was unable to send off any planes for a few hours, which obviously did a number on their schedule.  Communication was very poor – the gate monitors still said everything was on time, and the gate announcements were not terribly informative. They had no idea what was going to happen next, and to talk to anyone about options you had to go to the ticket counter, which of course was on the other side of security. Thankfully, this all provided a rich opportunity for bonding with the other passengers; a common refrain was “I had told myself I wasn’t going to fly Spirit again, but…”

When the system finally came back online, they sent out a later flight then came back to ours, which finally went out to Las Vegas only 3-4 hours late. Unfortunately for me, my connecting flight from Las Vegas to Boise had not been delayed as long, and when I arrived in Vegas it had already departed. After finally finding someone to talk to (ticket counter again, and as you can imagine the lines were long as they tried to work through the backlog of stranded travelers) I found that my options were 1) Rebook on the next Spirit flight to Boise, which was a full 24 hours later, or 2) Find my own earlier flight to Boise, pay for it myself, and get a refund from Spirit for the Vegas-Boise leg.  (Apparently, unlike every other airline I’ve ever flown on, Spirit refuses to rebook you on a different carrier’s flight if theirs is cancelled or badly delayed). After some quick internet searching and phone calls to Serenity, I decided to go with option 2 – I found an Alaska Airlines flight via Las Angeles that wasn’t prohibitively expensive and slated to get me there by about midnight, which was better than midafternoon the next day.

That flight went smoothly (actually rather pleasant), and during the layover I was able to get ahold of a Spirit customer service agent on the phone (after only 40 minutes on the line!) who quickly and efficiently cancelled my rebooked Vegas-Boise leg and promised that I’d be getting an e-mail about a refund within a few days. Of course, that was over a week ago and I haven’t heard anything yet… But anyways, Serenity and Chirstina picked me up at the Boise airport around midnight, and I had arrived! Overall I considered it a victory – I triumphed over circumstances, kept my cool (even kind of enjoyed the challenge) and made it the same day. Still, I may be immune to the lure of cheap Spirit tickets for a little while.

— HOUSE AND CATS–
Anyways, the next day (Friday) Chirstina had to work – it was her first week on a new job with the State of Idaho, answering tax questions. So Serenity and I broke out the 2-player games – specifically, we played two rounds of Star Wars: Rebellion, which was new to me (though I had heard of it) but a favorite of Serenity’s. It is a 2-player thematic asymmetric card-driven wargame, and was quite enjoyable (very thematic). The first game I played as the Rebellion, and was rather crushed because I failed to hide my all-important secret rebel base very well, and furthermore failed to defend it sufficiently. Quick win for the Empire. The second game we switched sides so I got to be the Empire, and this time I won, though only barely. I found the secret base three times, but it was well defended, and I only managed to destroy it just barely before my time ran out. Along the way Emperor Palpatine converted Princess Leia to the dark side, because Luke was too hard to turn… just like Vader promised (but failed to deliver) in the movies!

Once Chirstina came home from work we quickly packed the car for camping – she and Serenity already had everything prepared and organized for the trip – and headed out up the Boise river to find a campsite. The route soon became a winding dirt road along the side of the mountains – the sort that has two way traffic but is only one lane wide in many places, requiring some negotiation and maneuvering when there is another vehicle.  Fortunately the speed limit was only 25 mph, and Chirstina had quick reflexes so we made it there safely.  

We had a short list of no-reservation primitive national forest campgrounds along the route, and were hoping we could find one with a spot available on a beautiful Friday evening in June. The first campground,  Willow Creek, had the most spots (9), and they were all full. There were even additional people camping in unofficial spots nearby. That wasn’t very promising, but we continued on. 20 minutes later we reached the next campground, Badger Creek, and to our surprise found that it was completely empty. I wondered if it was closed or there was something wrong with it or something, but no, everythings seemed to be in order (and the next morning a second camper did arrive). It was just an unexpected blessing.

The campground was beautiful. I’m going to transition to pictures now.

As you can see, it was right by the river, which was fairly high with spring snowmelt, and we loved the sound of the rushing water.

This photo is of the hill across the road. Remember that rock.

Uh oh, looks like gmail has a limit on how many photos I can embed in the e-mail, and I’m at that limit. Looks like this is going to have to just be part 1.  To be continued!

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Kristina’s Website: Life Coaching for Adults with Autism