Drove through rural Idaho this weekend. This, just outside of my old college town of Caldwell, about 30 minutes west of Boise.

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And the close up.

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I really like Idaho, actually. It's weird that the entire area around Boise is this overwhelming, never-ending sprawl of sterile subdivisions, all of which look like they've been built by the Bluth Company, and it's also weird that you'll see signs like the one above every once in a while, sometimes proclaiming giant verses from the Bible and sometimes just reminding you that no matter how many Obama bumper stickers you slap on your bike, your vote will be nullified and canceled out by somebody with the exact opposite set of belief systems as you. But that stuff aside, Idaho is often gorgeous, and there are good people there, too, even though they might be in the minority vs. the batshit crazy ones, and the whole goddamn state is just so earnestly and wholeheartedly and desperately American, for better and for worse, that it's a pretty great place to be on the Fourth of July. Or maybe this is more accurate: It is, if nothing else, a very appropriate place to be for the Fourth of July.