How can anyone make a trip to Idaho and not visit The Potato Capital of the World! It's Blackfoot, ID and it's also the home of the Idaho Potato Museum, an educational and entertaining foray into the world of that most special spud, that terrific tubor, the ever-popular potato! See the giant potato! See the world's largest potato chip! Discover the fascinating history of the potato! And get a free pack of hash browns with each admission!
This was probably my favorite day of the whole vacation. We took things at a leisurely pace, the weather was beautiful, the hotel room in Pocatello was roomy and we got a nap in the afternoon! Plus we got free hash browns! This is what family vacations were meant to be!
Of the many glorious sites on our list, we saw:
This was also the point where Melissa discovered Fry Sauce at the Arctic Circle burger joint in Diamondville, WY. It's basically mayo and ketchup mixed together, but folks in UT and areas nearby swear by the stuff, and now so does Melissa!
But not just any prison! The former Wyoming State Penitentiary in Rawlins, home to the Wyoming Frontier Prison Museum. Melissa has a morbid fascination with prisons and prison culture, so when we found this museum on our route it became a must-see. 
The Ames Monument is a pyramid built out in the middle of nowhere, on a stretch of dirt road off the main highway. Originally constructed as something to look at from the train when the railroad cut it's way across the country, when the highway came along the tracks were moved and now it stands starkly alone on the breezy hilly countryside.
What was intended to be a quick side-of-the-road photo opportunity turned into one of the most pleasant surprises of the trip: The Swetsville Zoo!Don't come to Bill Swets's zoo expecting to find animals -- not live ones, that is. The sculpture park is a constantly growing menagerie of more than 150 dinosaurs and other real and imaginary animals, flowers, and windmills -- all constructed from car parts, farm machinery, and other scrap metal. The whimsical nature of the sculptures is a delight for kids as well as adults.
Each piece was an amazing amalgam of rusty bits and pieces welded together to create something that looked like it could turn its head and walk off at any moment. Truly a must-see for anyone with kids passing through northern Colorado! Rocky Mountains? Pshaw!
In the end we just felt sorry for the fellow buried there. A Transylvanian immigrant named Theodore Glava, simply by virtue of his country of origin, has been labeled as an evil blood-sucking monster. The Denver library lists a Theodore Glava born 1877 registered for the draft in Boulder during WW1.
God bless you Mr. Glava!
Next on our arduous trek was a quick stop by the World's Tallest Mennonite in Newton, KS. This part of the world is definitely Mennonite country with horse-drawn buggies and Mennonite churches as prominent as any other denomination.The tallest, sturdiest Mennonite in Kansas stands 17 feet tall in Athletic Park. He is the Mennonite Settler Statue built in 1942 out of Kansas limestone. The Mennonite statue was not a Mennonite-initiated project. The statue was financed through contributions of wheat as a joint project of a local Newton community drive and a Works Progress Administration (WPA) art project. Max Nixon was the sculptor of the Mennonite Settler.
Caught this guy along the side of the highway between Wichita and Salina. That's the second biggest chimney sweep I've ever seen!
Our primary stop for the first day was the Museum of World Treasures in downtown Wichita, KS which houses among other things: a piece of the Berlin Wall, a tyrannosaurus named Ivan, Egyptian mummies, a shrunken head and the scalp of Custer's nephew! The museum is part Ripley's Believe It Or Not! and part Smithsonion Institute with its hodge podge of weird and wonderful artifacts.
Located in scenic Riverside Park in Wichita, KS, next to the yoga practicing flag corps (at least they were there when we went) one can find a set of great standing stones reminiscent of mighty Stonehenge. In fact it is a solar calendar, very similar to the more famous English landmark. On the Solstice and Equinox days of the year the noonday sun supposedly shoots through a large metal eye perched atop one of the stones and illuminates different colored glass stones embedded in the ground. Our timing being slightly off (as seems our lot) we missed any spectacular display. But it makes one anticipate another more timely roadtrip, just to see if it really works! We can, however, imagine having to wade through a crowd of candle-carrying Wiccans and new-age dudes in tie-dyed shirts in order to see anything when the time comes!
We're back from the Great Potato Run of '08 commonly known as our vacation. Along with our honorary Duncan Ashley P., we made a whirlwind tour of 7 different states! This week I'll be posting highlights from the trip, so sit back and pretend you're riding in the van on a seemingly endless trip across our great country. See the sights. Hear the stories. Smell the smells. You know the ones... coming from the back seat after days on the road!
The first organized lunch-counter sit-in for the purpose of integrating segregated establishments began in July 1958 in Wichita Kansas at Dockum Drugs, a store in the old Rexall chain. In early August the drugstore became integrated. A few weeks later on August 19, 1958 in Oklahoma City a nationally recognized sit-in at the Katz Drug Store lunch counter occurred. It was led by NAACP youth leader Clara Luper, a local high school teacher, and local students. It took years but she and her students integrated Oklahoma City eating establishments. Today, in downtown Wichita, Kansas, a statue depicting a waitress at a counter serving people honors the sit-in.
