June 27, Missed the Geisers

This morning dawned cool and rainy. Jeff procrastinated for quite a while before he finally ventured out the door! In fact, he walked over to McDonald's for breakfast, and brought me a cup of coffee.

Jeff was surprised to get a plain white wrapper at McD's!

Procrastinated a bit more, trying to decide if he should wear his running rain jacket or not. Finally, he left without it. I went to Walmart for a few things. Then drove out after him. Since he was backtracking to where we left off yesterday, I picked him up and drove him out to the mile marker. Then we both slogged back in the rain. Well, it didn't really rain all day. But the showers were pretty determined. It was great watching them over the plain from a distance.

Although today was a sort of short day, well, over 30 miles but not 35.... Jeff seems to have had a pretty good day. We stopped for lunch, and waited for it to stop raining again. All in all, I think he is doing really well! Here are some thoughts from Jeff:

"Well what has the first month on the road taught me?

Log trucks drivers are the best
Hay trucks suck, well blow actually
Side of the road is best campground
Nothing tastes good after eating it for a month, not cookies, not crackers
Shoes wear out
Your favorite running shorts are like shoes, they wear out
No running store has anything that you like in a strange city

They only things that I still truly enjoy is my kona cola Nuun and string cheese. I am so tired of nutter butter cookies. Peanut butter cheese crackers and peanut butter crackers get really old after three weeks
Mexican food is always amazing
Eating ice cream to keep your weight up gets old"

We also wasted some rainy time going to the Idaho Potato Museum. Really, we had very high hopes. We now know quite a bit more about potatoes than we did before!

For instance, Marilyn Monroe was the spokesperson, or model, or something, for the Idaho potato!

They also had a good collection of Mr. Potato Head's, and also potato mashers and peelers. That was kind of interesting. Not to mention, the Guinness Book Record chip!

Pretty interesting stuff. We were also blessed with a carton of dehydrated hash browns, just for visiting. Taters for out of staters....

History of the local russet potato. If you can enlarge and read it! 

Another Guinness record.

And historical facts regarding potatoes.

Now that you are brought up to speed on the potato thing, there was another really cool thing that was supposed to happen today. Our neighbors, Barb and Gary Geiser, and their family, were flying into Salt Lake City, then driving up to Yellowstone National Park. They just happened to be coming through Pocatello the same day, essentially, that we were. Well, Blackfoot really. But it is close. Anyway, we had been communicating about when and where we might meet "on the road" so to speak. We sort of had it figured out, then one of their rental cars went haywire on them. After lots of hassle, they ended up with a different rental car company, and left the one that broke down on the side of the road. Sure don't blame them for that! However, the end result was that they were running so behind, that they were already not arriving at the park until about 10:30 PM. So, we missed them after all.... But, it was a great idea. Sometimes you just never know what could happen. You know, those best laid plans....

So, back to the road ahead. Tomorrow, we plan on making it on into Pocatello. Unfortunately, none of the news people that I contacted have followed up on our story, so we won't be in the news here as we were in Boise. I guess with all the storms in the Midwest and all, there is plenty of important news out there.









Although it rained a lot, Jeff was still able to get some photos of stuff. Of course, he managed to find a Flower of the Day. I think it is just a weed, perhaps a thistle which they consider really bad around here, as it is invasive and not from around these parts!

Something they do do around these parts is play Mailbox Baseball. It was pretty obvious as we moved closer to town, the number of mailboxes that were dented. We even saw one post that was missing its box! Missed that pic, though. Jeff was pretty amazed at some of the ways that folks engineered their mailbox to be Mailbox Baseball proof! So the Mailbox of the Day is all about Mailbox Baseball today!

This guy put a spring on it. If you check
out Facebook, you will find a video of it springing!
Facebook/supportforfirefighters

So this guy just hung his on chains so it would
swing....

                                                

                                               And this guy just made his so large that it didn't matter if it was dented up!