Our Boise Trip: Empowered by Friendship, Shelley’s Birthday and, of Course, Wine

By Phil Anderson

For months we’ve had this trip planned to Boise, Idaho for the 2024 Boise Polka Dot Powerhouse Celebration! Not only has Shelley been involved with the Blazen Divaz for many years, which we speak of often on our podcast, but she’s also been a part of the Polka Dot Powerhouse Organization, or what the members are affectionally known as, “Dots”. I love their saying: Polka Dot Powerhouse:
Changing the world by connecting the Dots!”

Polka Dot Powerhouse is a global connection company empowering women to build lifelong friendships and business relationships, seemingly in that order. Founded by Shannon Crotty, its mission is to connect positive, action-forward women from diverse backgrounds, ages, races, locations and industries and they were holding their annual 2 day celebration in Boise this year.

We decided not to make the 7 hour drive from Coeur d’Alene to Boise but rather fly. And our airline of choice, especially when we have to bring wine, is Alaska! They have a wonderful (and brilliant) Wine Flies Free program which rewards wine enthusiasts traveling from select West Coast cities. To our joy, Spokane and Boise are two of those cities!

So we loaded up our VinGarde Valise Petite 8 Bottle Wine Suitcase (formally Fly With Wine) and headed down. If you want to learn more about the products of Fly With Wine, check out Episode 211, when we had Founder and CEO, Ron Scharman, on as a guest way back in May, 2024. Or visit our Things We Use page for direct links to wine products we use.

This was our second trip to Boise and, like the first time, we stayed in The Grove Hotel. Why change when you had a great experience last time, right? This hotel exceeded our expectations once again, thanks to its exceptional staff. The front desk team and restaurant staff, impressively composed of young professionals, provided top-notch service. Their 4th floor terrace was drenched in sun the entire time and in the afternoon, when the temps were in the low 70’s, I found myself working from there. They had great music playing on outdoor speakers. I’m not usually one who likes working with music on but in this instance, I had no problem at all!

If you’ve listened to our podcast, you know that Shelley is the recipient of flowers every Friday. We call it Friday Flowers. Well, since Shelley’s birthday fell on the Friday we were in Boise, I walked across the street to Trader Joe’s and bought some flowers to have in our hotel room. The hotel also loaned me a vase to put the flowers in which was great! Since she was at her conference all day on Friday and Saturday, I was able to get a lot of work done. No dogs. No chickens. No tortoises. No distractions. It was nice. Actually, it was better than nice!

So, here is a recap of our visit to Boise:

Day 1 & 2: Settling In, Top Golf, and Unexpected Hockey

Day 1: Thursday, October 24: Cinder and Veer Wine Project

Thursday was an early, early, EARLY start. We were up and out of the house at 3:30 to the airport. I won’t go into too many of the boring details but we ended up at our Hotel around 10:30 and our room wasn’t quite ready yet so we grabbed lunch in the hotel restaurant. By the way, we LOST an hour flying in to Boise. Idaho has two different time zone, if you can believe that! So the usual flight of just over an hour was, well about 10 minutes, as the clock turns!

After kicking off our trip, we settled back into The Grove Hotel, which continues to be a favorite of ours. The front desk team and restaurant staff—impressively composed of bright, young professionals—provided top-notch service. We even discovered a hockey arena right in the hotel, picked up some delicious Idaho bacon, and caught up with Amanda Robinson for some fun at Top Golf!

Friday was all about balancing work and celebration. While Shelley spent the day at her Polka Dot Powerhouse conference, I worked from the hotel’s sun-drenched 4th-floor terrace. No dogs, no chickens, no tortoises, and no distractions—just great weather, background music playing on the outdoor speakers, and a gorgeous view. Later that evening, the gala dinner rolled around, where we sat right with the organization’s founder, and cheered as Jocelyn Babcock took home the Polka Dot Powerhouse Silver Elite Chapter award. Changing the world by connecting the Dots! (And yes, the Huskies played Indiana around then too—let’s just gloss over that football loss).