Pocatello

I should have kept a list of all the cities around the country in which my husband and I have met after journeying separately. Salt Lake City, Seattle, San Antonio, Long Beach, Vegas...to name a few. This weekend, it was Pocatello, Idaho.

Since I was first to arrive at the hotel, I checked in and proceeded to "veg" for a couple of hours. K arrived, tired and hungry, so we took care of the hunger and crashed on the King.

Because we lead such terribly exciting lives, we headed out Saturday morning to a laundromat suggested by Siri. She said, "I've located something pretty close to you!" Aw...thanks, Siri! We started K's wash and then he left me there reading while Siri directed him to a Great Clips. All of the other customers at the laundromat were men. K returned, we folded, and then got the lay of the land in downtown Poky. We used a Cafe Rio gift card for lunch!

Then we headed up Pocatello Creek Road in search of Pebble Creek Ski Area and eventually ended up in Inkom. The place was all greened up with bright yellow arrow leaf balsam root flowers--every slope fully loaded! We saw some wild turkeys and met a couple of horses running toward us on the road. One was saddled, but riderless, and the other had a halter, but kept tripping on a lead rope. Further up the road, a cowboy was walking with his faithful dog who would not leave his master's side after watching the poor guy get dumped by his horse (I'm only guessing at the sequence of events). He sort of glanced our way and gave a little wave. Looked like his pride was hurt more than anything.

After that we headed to ISU's Idaho Museum of Natural History. We had seen signs for it everywhere and we knew it was FREE! Well, not only was it free, it was closed. So then we headed over to the Museum of Clean. That's an interesting place and with our AAA discount, we only paid $8. We twice watched the video on how to clean your bathroom in 3.5 minutes, just to make sure we were catching it all.

Along with laundry and hair cutting, we had bills to pay so we returned to our hotel to take care of our financial business. Next we fueled the cars, ate out at Chang Garden (really good!), and then stopped off at Winco so the ranger could load up on a few vittles. Please note, however, that I did tote along a box of dry goods from our own pantry and K looked through that before we went food shopping. His comments were, "Wow! Great! You're amazing!" At Winco he purchased a tub of margarine, a package of hot dogs, some string cheese, and some cans of soup. Oh, and a box of baking soda for the stinky fridge. Yes, it's clean, but it still stinks.

K checked lds.org for a Church schedule and we found an 11:00 a.m. Sacrament Meeting just up the street. Life is sweet when your check-out time is the same as your Church time. We found the ward to be very friendly and chock full of memorable personalities. Gospel Doctrine class was interesting, and Relief Society and Elders Quorum were even more interesting. The RS teacher had a basket of chocolate to pass around. After it had gone around the room twice, she said, "Just keep passing the chocolate. Just keep passing it!"

And now we have gone our separate ways. We are so thankful for technology that allows us to communicate daily! K gets to spend three more nights in the dorms with other rangers for training. He has some excellent ideas for some of the programs he'll be presenting! I can't wait to be in attendance!

Some of the advice presented at training included things like, "Be sure not to fall into the the lake while giving your program." Another, "If you're presenting and a wild animal appears, go ahead and change your topic to that animal because no one is going to listen to anything else you've prepared." There were some other no-brainers such as, "Never promise a visitor that they will see wildlife!" I am currently reading Death in Yellowstone and there are some horrible accounts of people diving head first into hot pools to save...their dog...even after being told by others to not do it! Yes, both the human and the dog died.

Anyway, it was a gift and a blessing to hang out with the ranger this weekend. He sent a picture of the Tetons on his way back to the park this evening. Such a cutie! In case you were wondering, I really love him.