Utah Trip Day 5

This was the day of our big adventure! We planned a trip to Preston, Idaho, home of the famous movie "Napoleon Dynamite" and hometown of Brent's mom and her parents. Preston is about 140 miles from Alpine, UT. I have never been past Salt Lake City so I was very excited about heading north. It was going to be a long day of driving. However, the scenerey, once you get to Brigham City, was breathtaking!

Our first stop on the trip was in Logan, UT. The Logan Temple is where many people in Brent's family had been sealed.

It is a beautiful old temple built with stone.

We also visited the Logan Cemetery where Brent's grandparents, great-grandparents and other members of his family have been buried.

Next we headed out of town up toward Richmond. Richmond, UT is famous for the Pepperidge Farms factory. We just had to stop to see what was so exciting about the little "thrift" store.

They sell huge bags of reject goldfish crackers. The boys chose to purchase some maroonish/purple goldfish. It was close to 3 pounds. They enjoyed eating them throughout the rest of our long drive. I picked out some cookies. I love cookies!

Next we were off to our intended destination of Preston, Idaho. Our first stop in Idaho was at Brent's grandparents old house.

This house is right across the street from the famous Napoleon Dynamite track. Mitchell made a goal of riding his bike in every state (news to me!) so he went bike riding while we were there and even road on the track.

This is Mitchell riding in front of the track. Since the town isn't very large, Mitchell rode his bike behind our van as we went around town to other sites. We checked out Brent's grandfather's old store.

This store is right next to the DI Thrift Store that was used in the Napoleon Dynamite movie. Remember the scene where Napoleon went shopping for some sweet threads to wear to the dance? Yep, that scene was shot next store to Grandpa Smith's store! We visited a few more places in Preston and ate at Big J's Restaurant. The food was great and the service was fabulous. Its like a fast food restaurant with really nice people working there and they even come to your table while you are eating to bring you candy.

The next part of our trip was to go to Minitonka Cave. This is a wet cave by Bear Lake off of the little town called St. Charles.

To get to the cave, we had to walk down this wooden bridge/trail.

The entrance of this cave had to be enlarged so tours could go through. There is a door on the cave further in that has slats in it to let the bats in/out and to keep people out when they aren't giving tours.

The cave had all of the traditional stalactites, stalagmites, helectites, and soda straws. This stalagmite was damaged by looters in the early 1900's. If you look closely, you can see lines where they pieced it back together.

We were able to see a few bats in the cave. None of them were flying around. They looked pretty small. The tour guide said that they were full grown though.

The cave stays 40 degrees all year round. Which to an Arizona girl is pretty cold. We all bundled up to go on the tour. The name Minitonka means many waters. This cave has two "waterfalls" in it. The pictures didn't turn out to show you the little waterfalls but it was pretty cool. I would definitely recommend touring this cave if you are ever in southern Idaho.

On our way out of the park, we saw a family of skunks.

The rest of our way back to Utah was unbelievable. Bear Lake was huge and so blue! We went through Logan Canyon and the Logan river ran along the road the whole way. Unlike Arizona, the rivers in Utah actually have lots of water in them. We stopped in the canyon at Ricks Springs.

Although you can see a circle in the water at the back of this cave where the water is coming up, it is not a natural spring. It happens to be apart of the Logan River. Somewhere underground there is a diversion from the Logan River that pops up in this cave. The water is actually moving very fast.

It was an amazing day. We didn't make it "home" until close to 10pm.