Pocatello, ID

So Pocatello.


There is really only one redeeming reason I ever went to Pocatello, ID (other than the following the GUARPCCRT mantra of "Sure, I'll go there...").


As it turns out, my great-great grandfather, my mothers-mothers-mothers father is buried there (or we assumed he was - what the hell, it was only 8 hours roundtrip out of the way....) at the Mountainview Cemetery. My great great grandmother, it seems, went most of her life without figuring out what happened to her father, or at least wasn't sure where he was buried or what happened to him. He moved to Pocatello earlier in the 20th century, where he worked at the railroad depot, doing something. In a bit of a genealogy project, I made it to the cemetery Saturday morning (after spending the majority of Friday night tying one on with some locals at Hooligan's pub). Thankfully, they have a directory which showed you where every single plot of the roughly 20,000 gravesite are located. It was a Saturday, so obviously the city clerks office was closed, however, the cemetery had some sort of sytematic order to it, earliest graves were on the north side. Still, I wasn't about to spend a 35F Saturday morning looking for a needle in a haystack, family or not! (It's ok, they and I both know that it would be time for a few cold ones after a good 30mins anyway). I found the directory, found the grave, took some pictures, and hit the road north. Thank God for that directory too, cause the headstone was buried underneath some pine tree branches in the middle of a huge section (a lot grew, apparently, in 67 years).

Back to Friday night - I'm rattling this off in a stream of consciousness, work with me here. When I got to Pocatello after a lonng hike and long day of skiing, sometime around 8pm, I learned I was in the presence of the institution of higher learning, Idaho State University. Sweeeeeet- the opportunity to drink with more college kids.

After checking in to my room and doing some simple recon, it turns Idaho State University is a dry campus. No worries, there's gotta be a few bars somewhere - this IS Idaho in the winter - the only things to do, apparently, are drink, snowmobile, and get into some McLovin with the local livestock (I made that last part up, I don't THINK it's true...). I did find a local IDState bar and plopped down at a seat to watch the rest of whatever basketball game was on that I didn't really care about -tv's at a bar are always good on solo drinking trips, makes it look like you're not there JUST to get schnockered...- and started havin a few with some of the locals.
As it turns out, I was sitting next to some local Linesmen who were in town working on the power lines. One of them was from western Montana and gave me some recommendations on some places in that area to check out, which I ended up doing.


As I figure out on my trip, if you don't really know anyone and aren't planning on being in an area for too long - it's a much better use of your time to avoid big cities. Too many times (and even when I was working) you end up going into town, checking into the hotel if you're staying the night, going out to dinner, and walking outside the restaurant saying to yourself, "ok, what now?". The same goes for the roads - avoiding the major highways as much as possible was the best idea yet. I don't recommend this particular technique everywhere (Eastern Washington, Arkansas, West Texas, Oklahoma to name a few) because of the sheer boringness, and some places because of personal-safety reasons (if you can imagine Dueling Banjos playing, this scenario applies). Western Montana and the panhandle of northern Idaho were some of my favorite places yet....
10:30 AM - time to head NORTH, once more.