Coeur D'Alene Excedded My Expectations (More Progressive) (Clark Fork: vehicle, commuter)

[DagnyT63]

Originally Posted by Toyman at Jewel Lake

Funny story-not about an Outback, but a Prius. The perennial hippie/liberal/tree hugger car. I see one on my way to work pretty regularly, covered with bumper stickers. Figured they would be Obama (or old Gore ones) and save the whales type ones. Nope-all anti-abortion ones.

LOL!

Originally Posted by Sage of Sagle

The first two digits of Idaho plates tell us the county where someone is registering the vehicle. Makes it handy to know where people are from around here...

Interesting, thanks for that.

[banjomike]

When Idahoans see each other's plates in other states, it always mystifies onlookers when the drivers get out and start chatting, already knowing where each is from. Our code is very easy to remember once someone moves here.

Our handsome plates are also easy to spot in traffic. When the current design was first issued, a movie producer liked them so much he used them on a limousine in the movie "Coming to America".

The slogan 'Famous Potatoes' wasn't always on them. When the Idaho Potato Commission first formed around 1949 as a statewide marketing organization for the industry, the guy who was the first marketing Director came up with the slogan and pushed the state legislature hard into using it on the plates. Back then, when people though of potatoes, Maine was the state that first came to mind.
Not any more! The slogan made Idaho's spuds more famous, and our spuds are now considered to be the premium bakers all around the world.

Ours were the first booster plates in the nation, and many other states followed our lead as the years went by. Over the years, various interests have attempted to replace the Famous Potatoes slogan, but none ever got very far. Idahoans like the uniqueness of the slogan.

Our older plates carried a more generic slogan- 'The Gem State'. They were all brown with white lettering; during WWII, the plate was left unpainted and the lettering was brown. Back then, just before Famous Potatoes, there was a little baker opened with a pat of butter on it between the county code and the serial number. All the numbers were 4 digits- plenty enough to cover the state's cars. Trucks had a T before the number.

[Clark Fork Fantast]

[quote=ediddy;36088294]Dagny,

Every 2nd car on the road in N. Idaho seems to be a Subaru Outback. From that alone you'd think this place is an Idaho version of Berkeley or Ann Arbor. It's not. It's just that Outbacks are good cars for the 4-5 months of crappy snow/ice mix weather we have to deal with every year. It's not that unusual to see a "NRA VOTER" or "ABORTION IS MURDER" bumper sticker on one of these Outbacks.

There is definitely a liberal presence in CDA. It's mainly downtown. But even the liberals I know aren't THAT liberal. One of the biggest Obama supporters I know has a whole bunch of guns and her husband drives a humongous gas guzzling SUV. Go figure. There are a lot of hippy organic food stores. But again, I shop there, and I'm as conservative as you get.

What is happening though is there are a ton of apartments being built all over CDA. Interpret that as you will. To me, more apartments is not a good sign for the future of an area since it means more low income people moving in (yes I know I'm a horrible human being for not loving low income people). At the same time, there is also a never ending stream of nice expensive custom built homes going up just outside the city.

And CDA has definitely become big. I moved here less than 5 years ago and when I first got here what I loved about the area was the small town feel but big city amenities. But now, it seems like CDA is getting bigger by the day and has lost that small town feel. Or maybe I've acclimated to it and it doesn't feel as small to me anymore, compared to when I first arrived from a city of 5 million. Seems like there's no CDA anymore, it's CDA blends into Post Falls which blends into Liberty Lake which blends into Spokane. It's just one big non-stop city with malls and subdivisions everywhere.

Overall it's a good place to live, but it lost the WOW THIS PLACE IS AWESOME!! feeling I had when I first came here. I'm looking to Missoula as a place I might move to. It has more people than CDA population wise, but whenever I go there, it still has that small town feel that CDA is losing. And yeah, Missoula is Berkeley in Montana, but whatever, live and let live.[/
QUOTE]
As long as the gun show is held at the University, I wouldn't call it "Berkeley in Montana"!

[banjomike]

Nothing agains Missoula, but i visit there often, and there are some things I don't like about it.
Because it's down in a small hole, it gets smoky and stays smoky whenever there's a forest fire anywhere in the area, and during the winters, log smog often sets in and makes the place smell like a smoldering tire dump.

The town is full of very odd junctions; one, called Malfunction Junction, is a major 5-way, and if you miss the right street, you can head off into parts unknown with no way of turning around.

While I like the town in general, there are quite a few bums hanging around in it. They come from I-90, the railroad, and all those very remote little towns that lie to the north. But overall, it's a wilder and woolier place than most in this neck of the woods, and still retains a lot of it's pioneer character. A very colorful town with a colorful history, and it's not nearly as yuppified as folks think it is.

[mistyriver]

Originally Posted by Clark Fork Fantast

As long as the gun show is held at the University, I wouldn't call it "Berkeley in Montana"!

No, me neither. I would say Bozeman seems a lot more liberal than Missoula.

I'm also a liberal with guns. Liberals aren't necessarily what they are portrayed as on Rush Limbaugh or Fox News. Though it is convenient to be able to dismiss different viewpoints by pigeonholing them. (that wasn't directed at you CFF!)

[banjomike]

Originally Posted by mistyriver

No, me neither. I would say Bozeman seems a lot more liberal than Missoula.

I'm also a liberal with guns. Liberals aren't necessarily what they are portrayed as on Rush Limbaugh or Fox News. Though it is convenient to be able to dismiss different viewpoints by pigeonholing them. (that wasn't directed at you CFF!)

I know lots of liberal gun owners here and in other states. Everyone in Idaho does; liberals here are hunters just as much as conservatives are, and many participate in other shooting sports. Down here, cowboy shooting is becoming very popular, afoot or horseback.

Boze was once more liberal than it is now. The town is no longer the picturesque and laid back place it once was, and the hill hippies moved on long ago. It's now overcrowd, underpaid, overtaxed, and full of lots of miserable and angry people.

And the town was never that liberal to start with. For many decades, the natives enjoyed all the colorful foks who settled in or drifted through, and there was a lot of tolerance for everyone and all opinions. Not so now. All that is gone.

I loved the town in 1989 when I first moved there, and hated it after I moved back again in 2001. Far too many folks moved there because it was beautiful and was still very western, and along the way they ruined it.

A real estate lady told me the average resident's stay is 18 months. That was over a decade ago, and it's only gotten worse since then. i still go there regularly as I do some business there and have quite a few friends all over the area, but I'll never live there again.

[DagnyT63]

Originally Posted by mistyriver

No, me neither. I would say Bozeman seems a lot more liberal than Missoula.

I'm also a liberal with guns. Liberals aren't necessarily what they are portrayed as on Rush Limbaugh or Fox News. Though it is convenient to be able to dismiss different viewpoints by pigeonholing them. (that wasn't directed at you CFF!)

I don't call those "liberals", I call them "independents". Here, we don't have many people who think for themselves enough to venture outside their party lines- especially when voting. And it goes both ways, the few Republicans are hard core old school and devoutly religious. Which reminds of a question that is completely off-topic: Does Idaho give voters the option to check a single box that will cast their vote in every race for a single party?

[LionFamily]

Originally Posted by mistyriver

Of course 7B is the best.

DUH.

[volosong]

My current AWD SUV has just about bit the dust and I've been seriously looking at the Subarus. I've crossed off the Crosstrek because they don't come with a spare tire. Not even one of those fake ones! Which is the preferred model, Outback or Forrester. I pretty much understand the differences between the two, but which is the AWD of choice driven by Pacific Northwesterners and Northern Rocky Mountaineers?

[chevpu1967]

I love my AWD Outback and when I visited Northern Idaho, there were many of them around. I got between 29-32 mpg driving it to and from the area. The one thing about the Outback that I noticed is that you cannot put chains on them, there isn't any room. So if you are a fan of chains for driving in icy conditions, you might want to make sure what you get can use chains.