Travelogue: Home Again, Part 1

I knew the Wood River Valley wouldn't look like I remembered it. I knew there would be stoplights and new businesses and even (sigh) a McDonald's.  So when I didn't feel "at home." I wasn't really surprised.

The window on the far left is the bathroom I got locked in.

One of the first things we did was look for my old house in Bellevue. I couldn't find it, and we had to call my Dad: "Which street was it again?  Oh, one more down, right."  The house itself looked the same, but there was a privacy fence all around the backyard, which gave it a very different feel from what I remember. We took a quick picture, then took off before they could call the cops that there were suspicious people loitering outside.

The number of stoplights on the two mile stretch between Bellevue & Hailey was a little surprising, since most of the building buildup wasn't right along the road. The McDonald's is on the north end of town, and I was able to pretend it wasn't there at all. One of my main requests on the trip was that we eat at places we didn't have available in Michigan, and we stuck to that pretty well, at least until the last day or two.

At first, I walked right past the Liberty Theater, and had to have it pointed out to me. I told everyone the story about how the last show before they gutted the place to renovate it was The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and they didn't care how trashed it got. Yes, I was there. No, I didn't dress up.

We saw the Mint, where my Dad used to work, and the Muleshoe, which my Dad used to own. Neither of them look the same. It was a little surreal--it felt just like a bunch of other small towns we've seen (mountains excepted). When we headed further north the next day, I didn't really feel a big sense of loss, or "wow, I've really missed the place." Mostly, it was just another place.