Culture Shock in Northern Idaho

By Bob Johnson

Photos by Michelle Johnson

Mother deer do not like me. Well, one specific mother deer, anyway. That’s one thing I learned during our family’s three-week stay in a secluded cabin whose large picture window in back had no curtains because our only neighbors were animals and birds. The cabin was on a densely wooded property seven miles southwest of a 413-acre theme park and six miles north of a multi-attraction family fun park.

But we weren’t in Orlando. We were in the unincorporated community of Garwood in Kootenai County, about a dozen miles north of the “big city” of Coeur d’Alene. And since we had always lived in actual big cities, it felt like another world.

My wife Michelle, my bonus daughter Makayla and I arrived in northern Idaho in late August 2024 after a week of caravaning through California and Oregon to spend time with family and friends. We had come to Idaho from Las Vegas to begin our new lives here.

Michelle and I had visited twice before in back-to-back springs after my lifelong friend and CPA had moved to Coeur d’Alene with his family four years earlier. We called them tax trips but they really were reunions.

Also friends from a wine club I’d belonged to three decades ago had completed a Northwest sojourn two years before this, which ended in Athol. With great friends to serve as a support system, Michelle and I were sold on the idea of making our final home in northern Idaho.