Idaho Falls Marathon: 07/30 - 08/02, 2021

Quick trip to Idaho falls to run the Idaho Falls marathon with Tracy Anderson.  

I flew out of Grand Rapids late afternoon on Thursday, July 29th.  I didn't get into Idaho Falls until around 9pm.  I grabbed an uber and got to my fancy Motel 6 just fine.  I was starving, so I walked to the Safeway to grab some simple food for the next couple of days.

Friday morning, I did have to call into a work meeting for an hour, but it was no big deal.  Since I was on Idaho time, it worked out good for me.  I was done with my meeting by 10am.  After the meeting, Tracy came and picked me up in her cousin's vehicle. Her cousin Carrie worked at the Idaho Falls museum as the curator.  We decided to meet her at the museum.  Her cousin gave us a tour of the entire museum. It sounds dorky, but I really liked it!  It was super interesting because she knew everything about all the artifacts in the museum.

Welcome to Idaho Falls!

I had no clue they found so many prehistoric animals in Idaho.

The cougar in the center was a new addition.  Sadly, he had started wandering down into town and was becoming dangerous to people.  They had to 'dispatch' him.  AKA: put him down.  

A local farmer found this carving from early settlers on his property.  He donated it to the museum.  I thought it was amazing!

They are not sure where this flag came from, but they think it's been through a few battles.  Carrie explained the care that goes into keeping a flag like this preserved.  Even though it's under protective glass and carefully tacked down, the threads are still slowly eroding over time.

Blood on the star from a battle?

The Oregon Trail went right through Idaho.  Apparently, the settlers took all their belongings with them.  However, as the trail wore on and it became more difficult to carry non-essential items, settlers starting throwing out stuff they decided they didn't need.  These are some of the items.  Some small stuff, but sometimes they threw out big stuff like pianos.  Carrie said that farmers will STILL find things that were thrown to the wayside on the trail.  The center item is a hair wreath.  Ew...

They also had the exhibit where they plasticize bodies.  They had animals and people.  Kind of weird to see a human leg.  But still interesting.

After the museum tour, we went to lunch at a small cafe.  Carrie had to finish up her work day, so Tracy and I walked around a bit before we ended up getting our race packets at Bill's Bike and Run shop.

Idaho Falls has a really beautiful river and walkway along the river.  They really utilized the waterway well!

There is a large Mormon population in Idaho Falls,  This is the LDS Temple of Idaho Falls.

Japanese Zen Garden area.  However, Carrie knew the real history from working at the museum.  This area originally had a brothel located on it.  Now it's a popular place for weddings.   lol

That evening, we picked up Carrie's husband and the 4 of us went to dinner at a Mexican place in Idaho Falls.  Since we are still mid-Covid, lines were long because the restaurants cannot get workers.  But we had a good dinner and then Tracy's cousins took us around to show us the marathon route.  The Marathon was going to be an out and back.  We would take busses out to the start and run back into town.  It's nice to see the route before hand so you can be kind of familiar with where you are running.

Here we are at the start of the race!  The race started at 6000ish feet.  Usually that is not a problem.  HOWEVER, there were a couple of huge hills within the first 10 miles of the race.  Those hills almost killed me!

Yeah, we took school busses to the start and here are all the marathoners.  Not a lot of people!  Maybe 60-100.  More people ran the half.

This picture does not explain the reality of this hill.  We are at 6000ish feet.  This hill was probably a mile or so long.  It was not that hot out, but since I was not used to the elevation, sweat was pouring off of me.  I had to run reeeeeeeaaally slow, but I made it up the hill without walking so I was proud of myself.

The scenery was really cool.  Thank goodness this huge rain storm did not hit us while running!

I never take a lot of pictures in the middle of the race. Mostly because I am dying.  But, I finished!  Not my best but not my worst time.

I'm too cheap to buy the good race pictures. haha

After the race, they dropped me back off at my hotel.  I showered and got ready for them to pick me up for a late celebratory lunch with beer.  We had a nice lunch and visited with Tracy's cousins for a bit.  After lunch they dropped me back at my hotel and I think I just crashed the rest of the day!

The next day, we were all planning on heading to Yellowstone for the day. It was going to be me, Tracy, her cousin Carrie and her husband and one of her sons.  I didn't know exactly what we were going to do, so I rented a car ahead of time on Turo.  After the car debacle we had in Hawaii (see that blog for more details!), I will never rent a car through a regular rental place again.  I rented a full size Jeep from this guy.  He dropped it off Saturday evening right at the hotel.  We could use it all the next day in Yellowstone.  Then he let me hold on to the Jeep and I drove it to the airport the next day and left it there for him to pick up.  And the money goes to a person, not a huge corporation.  It worked out perfectly!

Sunday, August 1st, I packed up my stuff and headed over to pick up Tracy and her cousins.  Her cousin's husband was good with driving, so we drove the 2hs through Idaho, a little bit of Montana and entered through West Yellowstone park.

Entering through West Yellowstone Park!

All these hot springs are beautiful, but they don't always smell the best! haha

You must stay on the walkways. You are not allowed to even touch the water on either side because it is so hot.

We decided that the area around old faithful was too packed with people.  So, we went on a little hike to see a bird's eye view of the geyser.  It took us longer then we thought so we didn't get to see it in full force!  We only saw the ending.  haha oh well!

One thing that I didn't really like about Yellowstone is that it is completely built to drive in your car to one spot, park, take a picture, and get back into your car and continue driving to the next location.  I hate that.  The walkways were absolutely packed and we walked along some areas like sheep.  Getting away from people is pretty easy though.  Most people are totally lazy and will not put any effort into walking farther then they have to.  We just needed to head on the paths that had stairs or were farther to walk and there would be 1/4 the amount of people.  Even thought I thought the park was packed, I was told they were no where near their pre-covid numbers.  Also, foreigners usually make up a majority of the tourists.  There were no foreigners because of travel restrictions and Covid.  It was all Americans.

This doesn't even look real!!!

We joked that this was an animatronic buffalo.  It was easy to spot any wildlife because EVERYONE would stop right in the road and get out of their cars to take pictures.  Whenever there was a traffic jam, it was not because of an accident, it was because everyone was gawking at the animals!  Whenever you saw a pile of people staring into the distance with their super zoom lens, there was probably an animal to look at.

I guess this natural area is typically covered in water falls.  They were in the middle of a drought, so no water falls. Mammoth Hot springs.

The little town in the distance is Fort Yellowstone, which seems find of funny to think this was a fort originally.  But now it's the headquarters for Yellowstone

Around 5pm a lot of wildlife started coming out.  This guy walked right into the little town!  One thing that kind of sucked is that this whole area is a national park so the hotels and diners were closed or very minimally open because of covid.  We had to get our food and eat outside.  There were signs everywhere saying beware of the Elk! I don't think they are afraid to steal your lunch!

There's that animatronic buffalo again! hahah

This was our last stop in YellowStone!  We packed up after this and drove back to Idaho Falls.  We didn't get back until 10pm or so.  I filled up the Jeep, said my goodbyes to Tracy and her family, cleaned out the Jeep and gave it a car wash then headed back to my hotel.  The next day it was back to the airport early to catch a flight home!  Next time I need to spend more time there!