We woke up to a blue sky day on Mountain time. After a very average hotel breakfast, we headed down the road enjoying the sights in Utah. The Wasatch mountains on the right, and then Salt Lake City, with a great Salt Lake on the left. We were grateful to get through the morning rush-hour in Salt Lake City in good shape.
Today we would drive north headed up to the Grand Tetons area. The drive had all kinds of interesting sites with wildflowers, lots of sage, lakes and lots of beautiful mountains. Part of the area goes right through old lava beds, which actually kind of reminds us of Hawaii. There is a lot of lava and volcano history in Utah and Idaho.
People worry about what do we do during these long drives. Well, we talk, we look at the scenery, yesterday we listened to a CD of stories about national parks done by National Public Radio. And we play the license plate game, looking for plate from all 50 states plus Canadian provinces.
But, one of the happiest things that Patti likes to use is the RoadsideAmerica app on the phone. This app enables you to follow along the route you’re going on as well as search in different towns and cities for interesting, odd, quirky, and sometimes fabulous roadside attractions. We drove by without being able to stop or photograph a small model of Mount Rushmore that had been part of a roller coaster.. This was in Salt Lake City. We also read about a number of other places that could’ve been interesting to stop…had there not been so much traffic and so next time. We had to stop and take a picture of one of the “muffler girls”. These were a series statues, both male and female that used to be outside of muffler dealerships. This one apparently used to have a bikini and now has a more modest outfit, and was sporting a diamond engagement ring. Got a stop gotta take a picture of a muffler girl.
But, something came to the top of the pile which we could not resist. In Blackfoot, Idaho, we just had to go visit The Idaho Potato Museum. Yes, an entire museum dedicated to the beautiful potatoes of which Idaho is one of the major producers in the world. This museum had lots of interesting historic information about potatoes, which were originally found in South America, and then brought all over the world eventually to Europe, and especially Ireland and then back to the US. How do you make a museum about potatoes? Well, you can do everything from movies of how potatoes are grown and how they’re made into french fries, a big focus on how to pick and process potatoes. Potato chips are an important thing here including the worlds largest potato crisp, a giant Pringle chip that was 80 times as large as a typical potato chip. There were little displays of fun facts there were extensive collections of things like potato masher, and potato peelers. And even a virtual reality experience where you got to sit in a world-class tractor harvesting modern potatoes. And there was a whole section about Mr. Potato Head. Who knew how cool potatoes could be?
Of course we had to get a baked potato with “The works” at the Potato Café. Delicious. We will never look at potatoes the same again.
Finishing up at our potato extravaganza, we hopped out on Highway 15 thinking we had just a quick hundred miles more until we reached our destination. However, there was construction ahead. This little 2 Lane Highway our direction moved to a one lane highway. This added an extra 30 minutes to our drive. Sigh . But part of the reality and headed out on the open road. We were so glad when we finally passed the construction zone. The rest of the drive went much more smoothly.
We were so pleased when we arrived in our little town of Driggs, Idaho, on the western side of the Grand Tetons. Here we had reserved a small Airbnb tiny house for a couple of days. Grand Teton National Park is Dick’s favorite park out of all of them, and we always try to slip in a visit if we’re able. At this point in the summer, the main park is bumper to bumper, wall-to-wall people and cars. However on the western quiet side were able to enjoy some of the mountains being in the forest without so many crowds. Immediately the views were wonderful.
We settled in for a lovely evening enjoying being back in this beautiful area.
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