Your Guide to Boise in May 2025

There’s something for every Boisean in May: Birders, baseball fans, and cosplayers alike. As City Cast Boise audio producer Evelyn Avitia pitched on the podcast, it might be the best month to live in Boise.

Camping & Hiking Season in Full Swing

Boise’s foothills are as green (and yellow) as they’ll be all year during the month of May, and the rest of Idaho’s mountains start opening up to travel and recreation too as the snow at higher elevations melts away.

I’ll have more in Hey Boise soon about how to backpack as a beginner, but the more pressing question is how Idahoans will rise to the challenge of taking care of our public lands with so many of its caretakers either laid off or in limbo. The future is uncertain, but what is certain is that recreationists have a responsibility to care for our beautiful state.

Boise Hawks’ First Pitch

Baseball is back! I believe that even if you’re not a baseball fan, every Boisean should go to a Hawks game at least once a summer. The food and atmosphere are really what sell me on a sport that I don’t otherwise care about, and it’s a cheap and easy way to get together with friends.

The opening night is May 20, which starts a five-day run of home games at Memorial Stadium in Garden City.

Speaking of … Is It a Garden City Summer?

I know — how many times can Boiseans “discover” Garden City? Well, the answer is at least once more, because Garden City has some new kids on the block between Rosa (the Wylder Hospitality Group’s new taco joint). Oldspeak (a book and beer bar home to The Lit Room), and a new Bardenay location.

Garden City is being gentrified, to be sure, yet that’s sort of been the city’s plan all along. So the question is whether it can take care of the people who already call it home, and build up its creative, commercial, and housing industries sustainably. We’ll begin to find out as its new businesses, which are primed for summer, bring even more traffic to the shape-shifting community.