art in the park

Each fall Boise hosts "Art in the Park". It kicks off a month or two of community arts and faires. The Hyde Park Street Fair will be next weekend. It's Boise's version of Bohemia, hippy, summer of love remembrance. Think flower children come grandparents selling crystals, Alpaca wool garments, massage, and homoeopathic cure alls. But that's next week's blog.
Art in the Park. Each fall Julia Davis Park is overrun with masses of tents crammed with ketch, crafts, jewelery, cottage industry clothing, and rarely but still represented: fine art. Bands play in the center of the park at the band shell, surrounded by drive up "lunch wagons" selling everything from gyros to corn dogs.
Hundreds of people mill around dragging or being dragged by at least that many dogs (how many Great Danes can there be in Boise? I'm sure I saw all of them enjoying the arts)!
We met our friends in front of the Boise Art Museum and wandered through the fair with four children in tow. We weren't exactly aimless as our friends had a couple of items to pick up that their children had outgrown the previous year. The children had ideas of their own, the littlest one had her heart set on shaved ice. "Ice Daddy, ice," was her response to each question addressed to her. Mostly we enjoyed the sun, the ketch, and the easy slow paced conversation with good friends as we wandered beneath the towering trees.
We strolled though the rose garden at the end of our day while the children played hide and seek. What is it about a garden that children love to run along the paths among the formal plantings? The sky was blue and the sun hot and we all left exhausted. We were grateful we hadn't ridden our bikes like so many environmentally conscious Boiseans as we would never have made it home, our own power long gone.