Show Me Your Neighborhood- Rural Idaho, USA

I'm so excited to be part of The Piri-Piri Lexicon's "Show Me Your Neighborhood" blog link-up!  Bloggers from around the world are writing about what life looks like in their own small part of the earth.  So neat!  I'm especially excited about the homeschooling possibilities as we learn about geography and cultures in the future.

Rules- you must include these pictures:
- a playground/play area
- a local mode of transport
- a typical house/building
- a street nearby
- a school/nursery/ or other educational facility
- a market/supermarket/shopping outlet


A Play Area in Rural Idaho
Our towns and cities have plastic playground equipment, but kids in the rural parts of Idaho have to make their own fun.  In the summer, my kids love to ride bikes in the driveway, run their toy trucks in the dirt, and swim in the lake.  It's wintertime, now, so their play area looks like this:

The snow mountain was created by our snow blower.  Every time my husband uses the machine, the snow mountain gets bigger.  At the time of these pictures (Christmas Eve), there was about two feet of snow on the ground.

Town kids play at this playground.  This play structure has several adaptations for handicapped children, like 5-point harness swings and a wheelchair accessible slide.  In the nicer times of the year, this park can be very crowded.

A Mode of Transportation in Rural Idaho
This is our family car.  In Rural Idaho, most families have at least one car.  It's also very common for families to own more than one vehicle, with each vehicle serving a different purpose.  For example, a farm family may own a car that they use to drive to town, a truck that they use on the farm, an horse trailer, a "good weather" car, a snow plow, etc.  The car on the bottom of the picture is my husband's commuting car that he can only use about six months or so every year.

source: Car Organization

I also chose this picture to show you that it's not always snowy- sometimes the grass is green and the sun is shining.

  Public transportation (buses) are available in the towns and cities.  In our small town, a free bus runs a circuit every day.

A Typical House in Rural Idaho
It's difficult to say what a normal house looks like in rural Idaho, so I decided to include a picture of our old house (we're in the middle of a move- in the snow).  This house is a two bedroom and one bath house with an unfinished basement.  It has about 800 sq ft and would sell for about $170,000.  The orange fence is a renter's way of trying to keep kids from falling off the deck.

Here's another shot of the house in winter:

The blog post How to Survive a Foster Care Home Inspection has more pictures of the inside of our house (and a funny look at being a foster parent.

A Local Street in Rural Idaho
The day I took this picture, it was very yucky weather.  Normally, you can see across the lake to the town and mountains on the other side.  This highway runs north and south and connects the USA with Canada.  Can you spy the Canadian flag?

People in rural Idaho value outdoor adventures.  Our bike trails are wide and well-maintained.  In the winter, our region is renown for cross-country and downhill skiing, snowboarding, sledding, ice skating, and other winter sports.  In the summer, the highway is very busy and travelers come for our boating, fishing, water-skiing, swimming, camping, hiking, biking, and small town events.

Hunting is also a common activity, since Idaho is home to big game animals, like elk, moose, deer, bear, and cougar (mountain lion), and smaller animals, like turkey, pheasant, grouse, and quail.

A School in Rural Idaho
We homeschool, so my children's school looks like this:

source- How to Survive a Foster Care Home Inspection

Our learning wall usually looks more like this:

source- i is for insect

This is a picture of the local elementary school, which is about 30 minutes drive from my house:

This school is used by children age 5 (kindergarten) to age 12 (grade 6).  After elementary school, the kids go to middle school, which is in town and another 10 minutes away.  Their last years of public schooling happen at a high school, which is right next to the middle school.  After thirteen years of mandatory education, students usually attend college/university or enter the work force.

A Shopping Center in Rural Idaho
My favorite place to shop in town is this "country store."  The store mostly carries food, in pre-proportioned bulk containers; although they also carry kitchen items, some toys, and handmade gifts.  When you walk into the store, the first thing you notice is the smell.  It smells like home.  They bake bread and other pastries for sale and display them on a large counter.  The store also serves soup and sandwiches, and is a common sight to see a group of workers waiting for their lunch.  Unfortunately, the store is only open Monday thru Friday, so it's hard for me to get into town to shop there.

If the country store is my favorite place to shop, Walmart is my reality.  It's open everyday, all day (and night).  It carries all almost anything you don't know that you wanted.  Not only food, but also furniture, garden supplies, cleaning stuff, paper products, hardware, electronics, clothing, and baby care items.  It's hard to go to that store without spending money (or a lot of money).

Other Pictures from Rural Idaho
My husband and I felt bad that the picture of our neighborhood were so dull so we went into our archives and picked some pictures that showed the beauty of our area.

This picture was taken during the spring almost ten years ago.  I don't know the name of the wildflower or the mountain.  The body of water is a lake.

One of the common sights in our area is wild turkeys.  Despite their small brains, turkeys are fast and rarely end up as road-kill.

In contrast, these white tail deer are menaces to the road, and often end up getting hit by cars.  It's very sweet in the spring to see mothers and babies in the fields.  Many people in our area hunt deer (in the fall/autumn) for meat.

This is a large bird called a blue heron.  They live in marsh/wetland areas and eat fish.  They're rare and beautiful.

Old cabins are a common sight in rural Idaho, a dilapidated reminder of the pioneers and mountain men who forged the way for other settlers. This picture was taken in the fall/autumn.

One of the larger animals in our area is the moose.  Moose need to eat vegetation almost constantly to survive.  They love the plants that grow in marsh areas, but won't pass up an apple orchard (pictured) if they get the chance.  This orchard is surrounded by 6 foot tall fencing, but the moose just stepped over it to get to the trees.

I wish this picture was better, but hummingbirds are very difficult to catch on "film."  Their wings beat so fast that they make a humming sound like a giant bee.  Many people in our area set up sugar-water feeders for them during the summer.  The feeders allow us to get a close view of the tiny birds (their eggs are the size of a chickpea/bean).  When the sun shines on their feathers, they look like stained glass windows with hundreds of sparkling colors.  They're one of my favorite things about North Idaho.

I hope you enjoyed reading about my neighborhood.  I loved putting this post together.  Please click on the link at the bottom to check out other neighborhoods around the world.