Boise State---the new university

After I checked out of the Hampton Inn this morning, I drove over to a Starbucks along the main boulevard heading back to the interstate, thinking I'd work the rest of the day there.

There had been a snowstorm that morning, and the day looked shot for driving anywhere. But by eleven, the sky had cleared up. It was bright and sunny.

I decided to park on the street outside the Starbucks instead of their parking lot. Over lunch I gave myself a tour of the nearby Boise State campus. The football stadium, marking the edge of campus, was right across from where I was parked.

Next to it is a historical chapel, the first Episcopal church is Idaho-Montana-Utah, erected 1866.  The steeple had sharp pointed steeplets on its four corners, reminiscent of Mormon architecture. But on the very top of the main central steeple was instead a Celtic Cross, something you never see in Mormon style.

The main campus of Boise State sits along the south side of the Boise River, over the bridges from downtown where I'd been staying. A bike path skirts along the wooded banks. In the winter the river is low and one can walk out on to the plane of round rocks to where the stream flows.

Later I walked all the way through the main campus, and went into the College of Business for a while to grab a bottle of water and sit meditating, looking out the big glass windows at the quad, as the students came and went around me. 

Some were wearing jerseys from the winning team of the Super Bowl---proud in the moment of glory, but mostly it seemed subdued.

I went looking for the physics department---something I usually try to do. I poked into a door  of an old brick building marked "Science" above it, in stone, but it turned out to be a modern math tutoring facility now.

I was impressed by the Albertsons Library, the Environmental Studies Building, and the big glass "Learning Center." Of course the sports facilities are new, and top-notch for a university of this size.

They've really built this up from scratch recently here. Being here, I tend to think it has worked. Boise State is ostensibly postmodern in all its design. There is much fewer old-style cruft here than at other places. All this tells me the future is very good for a place like this.