Great Potato Marathon, Half Marathon, 10k and 5k

I love fun runs. Ever since that first color run I did three years ago I love them. There is so much excitement and energy at these races. Anyway, this one is Famous. With a Capital F.  The pick up packet was my favorite one ever, it comes in a potato bag. The race is put on by the YMCA and the Idaho Potato Commission, it has been around for 37 years. There was probably about 2,000 people in attendance.

What I found particularly cool about it is after completing your race, they hand out baked potatoes. You get a baked potato and there is all sorts of green onion, chili, sour cream, cheese, butter and its delicious. Well for me, I only ran a 5k, I don't know how I'd feel after a 10k or a half marathon. 

The  path for the race was wonderful, there was very little of the 5k that was actually on a road. The organizers did a very good job carving a path that was within the many parks around Boise. Most of the race was right along the river bed. 

They also have a mascot in Boise, Spuddy Buddy. It is a potato. It was not a terrifying fur costume. It was more like a friendly bald potato. There was also a beer walking around. 

It was all in all a wonderful experience and a great way to end my trip. My very long long road trip throughout the amazing states of Utah, Idaho, and Montana. Idaho was a great place to finish, it was beautiful and I would love to come back and visit someday. I will be sad to give the Acadia back tomorrow, that car was wonderful. 

Idaho

Idaho was not a disappointment. I always kind of wanted to visit it, probably because of its shape. It seems like the kind of place someone drew up when they were drunk, or maybe its left over pieces that the other states didn't want.

Idaho is a beautiful state, full of trees, mountains, rivers. Even when driving though it there are lots of things to see.  When I got to it I had just driven through Yellowstone National Park. I was still reeling from all the pine trees and snow covered mountains. It was lovely. There was a river winding around it and I followed it. I stopped and took pictures in a few places and I saw some deer, but this is not Idaho, this was still part of Montana and a tiny corner of Wyoming. Idaho was a lot different. The land sort of parted and there was mountains and a lot less trees. I was lucky with the weather, it got sunny and rained just a little here and there. The mountains were amazing, snow topped and I noticed every couple of miles there were historical landmarks. They were cute little pull offs that had metal and wooden placards describing the events that occurred in the area. Most of them were Native American spots, places were small battles occurred or where settlers traded. They are valuable parts of history. 

This drive was long. I had been going for about five hours when I arrived in Idaho. I was a little bit nervous because there was flooding in the area I was supposed to be arriving in, but there really wasn't, it was just wet. Some random lightening would go off in the distance, then it would disappear as my miles increased. 

One place which caught my eye in Idaho was the Lava Trail. It was a rest stop. The name was Hells half acre.  Seeing the land scape change in front of my eyes while I was driving made me know this place was something special. There is lava very close to the surface of the earth in Idaho. Geologists study this. The lava trail is where lava poured through fissures in the earth and cooled. Now different kind of plants and animals live there. They've adapted.  I was surprised to see cactus, I didn't know it grew this far north. 

J

Randy showed up in Boise my first day to surprise me and watch me run in the Famous Potato Marathon`s 5k. This is going to be a blog all by itself. We went to the capitol and took pictures, then wandered around downtown. It is a very busy little place. 

The rotunda in the capitol was beautiful. There was a wooden statue of George Washington carved out of Idaho wood. 

Great Salt Lake and Utah in General

One of the states on my list was Utah. I was not real excited about it, but it turns out I was wrong. I always did want to see the Great Salt Lake, so I did put that on my list. It always seemed mezmerizing to have a giant salty lake in the middle of no-where. How did it get there? Plus, the pictures of it always seemed amazing.  It was pretty anti-climatic, some it may have been the weather, it was over cast and windy. Strangely enough, it did make excellent pictures. Sometimes when I see an amazing place I know my camera isn't going to capture it right, this place is the opposite. It was perfect. Extremely photogenic. The colors were just mute enough and the difference in them was distinct enough, it worked. Being there in person though, it seemed depressing. 

My questions were answered: the lake has several rivers that empty into it and none that go out. Therefore, the only way the water leaves is by evaporation. Of course this leaves behind enourmous amounts of salt and minerals. There are no fish in the lake, only algae and brine shrimp, it makes the lake a greenish color. Also, on the beach I saw a lot of foam, I'm not sure why. It wasn't really that exciting.  Unless you like taking pictures, then its like Disneyland. One last thing about it, the smell. It smells really, well, ...not good. It actually burned my eyes a little the air was so salty. The smell of dead fish was in the air, but it did not make any sense.... there is no fish. 

My cousin Courtney lives in a city near Salt Lake City and I had only met her on Facebook, so I was lucky enough to have her reach out to me. She took me up into the mountains and I got to see a place called Rock Canyon. She lives near Lake Utah, a fresh water lake, it was visible from these mountains. Also we went to Bridal Veil Falls, a really beautiful double waterfall. There used to be a cable car traveling up the mountain. It looked like it would be scary. 

We then had lunch at the Sundance Grill. This is home to the Sundance Film festival. I had no idea there were so many movies filmed in Utah. I found that out at the capital building in Salt Lake. There were posters from every film shot in Utah. There were a lot. 

Mostly the city was beautiful. There were a lot of Homeless people wandering around and the public transportation wasn't that great. One thing that caught my eye was a busy intersection had these orange flags on both sides, when crossing you carry them with you for greater visibility and leave them on the other side. I've attached a video link to my Facebook account. Its a public video so it should be visible. 

https://www.facebook.com/elizabetsy.finch/media_set?set=vb.100000080108905&type=2

To watch future live videos I am on Periscope now at user name: Elizabetsy_ 

Montana

Montana. To me the name conjures up images of horses, Cowboys, and snow covered mountains. I didn't see any Cowboys yet, but I did see a lot of cows, horses, and mountains. The little hills and peaks I've seen in Eastern Montana reminded me of the Appalachians, but with flat spaces in between.

Before I get too far ahead of myself let me explain this trip. At the beginning of this year I set out to finish visiting the 48 connected US states. I took one of those Facebook quizzes and discovered I was only 12 states away from visiting all the states. (Hawaii is going to be my last one, because its so expensive.) I was never really interested in this before, but this Facebook quiz frustrated me with all the states I hadn't seen. My friend Keri also inspired me a lot too, she's been trying to get them all as well, that's where I got the idea to take a selfie at the state sign.  It seems kind of impressive, after all, we are a pretty big country so seeing all fifty states seems pretty cool. 

I landed in Billings and rented a car. Billings looks bumpy. This is the best way I can describe it. Bumpy. All these mounds pretending to be mountains, rolling hills.  I drove to the North Dakota boarder, took a selfie at the sign and drove back to Miles City. This is where I spent my first night. There were a lot of interesting things around me. The landscape, for one, is pretty amazing. There are cows (Yes I've seen cows before) and large rock formations everywhere. The cows wander around the rocks and the rocks look like the ones in old Disney cartoons of the old west. Just piles of odd shaped rock. They are huge and sometimes far off in the distance, the cows, and what appear to occasionally be Buffalo, dot the green and brown countryside. There are fences and grate in the ground at the entrances of the highways, this must be to keep the cows out.

There are dozens of scattered little cities and villages. I drove around one because I was going to stop at the state park and take pictures. It looked like it had a major economic down turn. I walked the streets a little. I didn't feel terribly unsafe, but it was pretty obvious that I did not belong. 

There are dinosaurs and dinosaur museums everywhere. I saw several spots to stop and visit small gift shop type museums. Prairie museums pop up every couple of exits. 

Miles City was loaded with Casinos. There were two on every block and the City Brew Coffee place seemed like an obvious knock off of a Starbucks. This particular coffee house is in many places in Montana. I had a white chocolate mocha and it was very tasty. 

The light shining off the top of the rocks and the large, long stretches of highway gives great viewing of  weather miles away. It was astounding. I drove through a wall of rain, it was incredible knowing it was coming, seeing it ahead of me and driving through to the other side, almost like a tunnel. Billings is loaded with stuff to see, I did not have time to see much, but I did get to visit Pictograph Caves and stop and see some historical points (there are many out here). I stopped in Bozeman to have lunch one day and it was a lovely little city. There are so many lovely little places. 

Alpaca Shaving Day! A visit to Via Verde Farm

I love Alpacas. In a nutshell, Alpacas are like Llamas, Llamas are a lot like Camels, but they are from South America. Peruvians have used them as beasts of burden in the Andes Mountains for a very long time.  I'm not a complete stranger to Alpacas as there was an alpaca farm my family would drive by occasionally when I was a child. After I graduated high school some of my friends and I stopped by to ask the farmer if we could feed them. It was delightful. They pranced around, they had little babies, they were friendly, occasionally spitting and making strange noises. When I got to go to Peru I was lucky enough to book a visit to an Alpaca farm and I learned a lot about them that day. So, needless to say, I love these furry, bouncy, little weirdos.




Fast forward to yesterday. One of my very cool Facebook friends, Natasha, sent me an invite to "Alpaca Spa Day". If you are like me you get tons of Facebook invites to events and rarely notice. This one caught my eye. I immediately checked my schedule and clicked "Going".  Someone on the thread asked if kids were welcome, the reply was "yes", so of course I knew this meant I could bring Randy. He was curious about what this would be like and what we could possibly do at an alpaca farm. When we arrived they had already started. There were these tiny little shrieking noises coming from the barn. Some of the Alpacas were already out in the yard, bouncing around, freshly sheared.

Restrained to protect people and themselves

When we entered they were tied down to the floor and the scene looked pretty graphic. It is completely necessary. They were tied by their feet. Alpacas are very long and skinny when tied up like that, it is for every one's protection. It would be impossible to shear them without doing this and because they are domesticated they really need to be sheared, it gets really hot. While the Alpaca is tied up they check their teeth and trim their nails. So technically it is "Spa Day".

The Alpacas weighed a lot, they can be 150-300 pounds. Some of them were able to be walked out with a harness, some of them were small enough to be carried out. I asked about the babies,  the breeding. They are only bred once a year because the gestation period is about 11 months. They look a lot bigger than they are with all that fur.

The shearing process 

The shearing team was amazing. They worked so quickly and efficiently.  It took about 3 minutes for each of them to get their nails done and be sheared.  The fur is beautiful when it comes off them. It is sent away and made into yarn. Alpaca yarn is so soft.

The farm was amazing. The people who run the farm are so great. This is a family owned farm. Tamara Miller, runs this farm with her family and she was very informative throughout the entire process. She answered our questions and was extremely hospitable. It's amazing to me she opens up her farm every year to let people see this exciting process.   From now on, I will always check my Facebook invites carefully, because this was a great experience I could have easily missed.


This is where we went:

http://www.viaverdefarm.com/

The bags of fiber

After they were shaved