Monday, November 24, 2008

Mormons and Potatoes don't accomodate my travel schedule.

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With an anticipated departure time of 10 AM on Saturday morning, we went ahead and left Eugene at approximately 1 PM after we got a big rip in our giant car topper bad and had to do some patchwork.
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This ruled Attraction #1: Underground Pendleton. So we pushed on to Boise and got in real late and went to sleep. The good news, the bag patching job that Ryan and his dad did seems to be sufficient, and his loose beer mug boxer shorts we shoved in there at the last minute haven't didn't end up all over rural wherever. Penny has a special little spot in the car with her bed and some sweet toys. She stays up there most of the time except she gets a little creepy in the last couple hours of driving and launches herself on Ryan's head.
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We wake up bright and early on Sunday morning and am pretty psyched about the attraction line up: giant roadside dinos, Idaho potato museum, Dino park in Ogden Utah.
Giant roadside dinos? Check. They were as sad and pathetic as you might imagine.
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Idaho potato museum? Bust. Not open on Sundays.
Dino park in Ogden? Bust. Mormons don't want me to see the dinos.
So instead we stopped by Twin Falls Idaho, my mom's former stomping grounds. I was pretty much wallowing in the severe dissapointment of not seeing any dinos or potatoes until we saw a group of people decide to base jump off of this giant bridge. We stayed to watch 4/5 of them. #5 was clearly a rookie and we didn't have time to wait around for him to sack up and jump.
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We went down through Utah and back up into Rawlins, Wyoming where we spent the night to prepare for the first stop of Day 3. I decided to call ahead to get the hours only to discover that the Frontier Prison Museum is by appointment only. No sitting in a real gas chamber for this kid.

Today we got up even earlier and detoured to Medicine Bow, Wyoming where the sites of the Como Bluff dinosaur fossil dig are located. The site yielded 28 new species of dinosaurs at the time it was discovered including the great Diploducus which is on display in the NY museum of whatever history. You're not allowed to to go off the road to check out the fossils as it is private property and also undeveloped land that is the home to rattlesnakes, but you can stop and see a cabin made entirely of dinosaur fossils. The cabin allegedly is also a museum that contains some fossils but I would not know as it was closed. It was also 19 degrees out so we had to keep the visit short.
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Onward through the great state of Wyoming, which consists of a lot of nothing and a few little towns, we went through Laramie and saw a giant Abe Lincoln head statue off the highway. Constructed in honor of 150 years of Abe's birth. We stopped to say hey. It was also the highest point on that highway, 8,000 something feet.
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We drove down to Colorado and got on a toll road to avoid going through Denver. $7.45 and 15 additional minutes to our route later we were hot on the trail of the Biggest Ball of Twine. On the freeway I saw several really awesome signs that were urging me off the freeway. See Live Rattlesnakes! Pet Baby Pigs! 6 Legged Steer! and the kicker: World's Largest Prairie Dog! I looked it up online and saw that it was part of Prairie Dog Town! Just off the freeway! A must-see for the intrepid pilots of 1-70 East. WE are intrepid pilots! So we call the number listed and it rings and rings. It would add about 40 minutes to the trip to go to PDT, should we do it? Should we chance it being closed? Would we always wonder if we had missed out on a giant Prairie Dog (visible from OUTER SPACE!) or the 6 legged steer (2 underdeveloped legs hanging out of its neck?! SICK!). We decided to chance it. It was closed. Looked like it had been closed for the last 10 years. We could see the prairie dog over the fence, it was not that huge, and doubtedly visible from space. Bust.
Time for the ball of twine! Everything I dreamed of and more, although I am dissapointed that we didn't arrive in the 3rd weekend of August to partake in the annual Twine-a-Thon and add our own twine to the ball!
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So that's it, the end of day 3.