Today, we leave Afton, riding at what would be considered maximum Harley takeoff weight. We are leaving Afton and not coming back, so we’re loading up the bikes to full capacity.

The first 64 miles of today’s ride are a mirror image of yesterday’s final 64 miles, only in the opposite direction.

North on US Highway 89 to Alpine Junction. Northwest on US Highway 26, following the shoreline of Palisades Reservoir, then riding along the Snake River until we reach Swan Valley, 64 miles from Afton.

Swan Valley was at one time a haven for whistling swans.

Today in Swan Valley, we’ll try something new: heading northwest on the Swan Valley Highway, toward Idaho Falls – in the heart of potato country.

Swan Valley is in Bonneville County, home of 8B license plates. While Idaho plates can be differentiated by their county of registration, all plates have one thing in common: Famous Potatoes. Since 1957, all Idaho plates have been issued with the slogan, FAMOUS POTATOES – yes, in all caps!

For many years, Idaho plates were also embossed with the image of a giant spud. The 1948 and 1949 plates had a larger-than-life potato with a dab of butter!

Idaho leads the nation in potato production, accounting for nearly one third of all US potatoes. Idaho growers produce potatoes on more than 300,000 acres of fertile volcanic soils. Volcanic ash has a rich supply of trace minerals and appears to be necessary for successful potato production.

Warm days and cool evenings are ideal for growing taters. It’s the secret sauce for baking potatoes and firm French fries. While the Russet is the most well known of the Famous Idaho Potatoes, farmers in the southeast part of the state grow more than 30 varieties, including Yukon Golds, Reds, and Fingerlings.

*** 

No discussion of potatoes would be complete without a spell check.

It’s p-o-t-a-t-o.

No “e” on the end. Unless you’re Dan Quayle.

On June 15, 1992, then-vice president Quayle gained notoriety and well-deserved ridicule for spelling potato with an “e” on the end. Quayle, never known as an intellectual heavyweight, altered 12-year-old student William Figueroa’s correct spelling of “potato” to “potatoe” at the Muñoz Rivera Elementary School spelling bee in Trenton, New Jersey.

Quayle is probably better remembered for this gaffe than for anything he did while in office. In fact, if you Google “Dan Quayle vice presidential accomplishments,” you’ll find a seriously unimpressive list, topped by his visits to 47 countries, and being appointed chairman of the National Space Council. Wow!

Has anyone ever considered why former US Senators from Indiana make such poor choices for vice presidents? Quayle is generally regarded as one of the weakest VPs ever, just behind the disgraced Spiro Agnew (who was from Maryland).

On the bright side, Quayle is ranked #66 on the list of Famous Politicians You’d Want to Have a Beer With. And, as a single-digit handicap golfer, you might enjoy watching Caddyshack with him.

What is it with Indiana politicians who rise beyond their level of incompetence and become Vice President? Six of ‘em, so far.

***

We arrive in Idaho Falls, one of the larger cities we’ll visit on this trip. With a population of around 62,000, it’s similar in size to Grand Junction, which I passed through on Day One of our journey.

Idaho Falls, in my memory, will always be “Idiot Flats,” as that’s what one of my college roommates called it. He was from Idaho Falls, and must have known what he was talking about.

Maybe things have changed since then. In 2019, livability.com put Idaho Falls on its list of top 100 affordable places to live, with a “liv” score of 617. The quintessential meal in Idaho Falls, according to livability.com: “A big heaping pile of potato pancakes topped with applesauce from Smitty’s Pancake & Steak House.” That, and other attributes, was enough to push Idaho Falls to number 47 on the list.

Idaho Falls is in Bonneville County (8B license plates), where Mormons make up about 60 percent of the population. Idaho has a greater percentage of Mormons than any other state, except Utah.

Idaho has five Mormon Temples. A sixth one, in Pocatello, is under construction and should be completed later this year. Utah has 17, with another six either under construction or awaiting the start of construction. The first Mormon temple in Idaho is right here in Idaho Falls.

We blow through Idaho Falls, and head west on US Highway 20, known as the West Arco Highway. Arco?

Musically, arco means with the bow, something you might do with a violin, or a cello.

ARCO also signifies Atlantic Richfield Company, a giant oil company with more than 1,300 gas stations in the western US.

In Idaho, Arco is a city in Butte County (10B license plates) with a population of around 1,000.

Arco was the first community in the world ever to be lit by electricity generated solely by nuclear power. This happened for about an hour on July 17, 1955. The town was powered by Argonne National Laboratory’s BORAX-III reactor at the nearby National Reactor Testing Station.

Six years later, the facility gained additional fame when a reactor was destroyed through an operator maintenance error. The ensuing steam explosion killed three people. It was the world’s first fatal nuclear reactor accident, and the only one in the US, so far.

***

In Arco, we turn southwest and head for the Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve, so named because early settlers thought the landscape resembled the surface of the moon. How would they have known? When the pioneers arrived here, man hadn’t yet set foot on the moon.

The second group of NASA astronauts to walk on the moon visited Craters of the Moon in 1969 – not to train, but to study the volcanic geology.

Apollo 14 astronauts Alan Shepard, Edgar Mitchell, Joe Engle, and Eugene Cernan explored the lava landscape and learned the basics of volcanic geology in preparation for future trips to the moon.

NASA believed these men might someday be walking on the moon, with the rare opportunity to collect samples of different rocks on the lunar surface. Since only a limited amount of material (850 pounds total in 6 moon landings) could be brought back, it was important that they know enough geology to pick up the most scientifically valuable specimens.

Craters of the Moon has three major lava fields. It is a dormant volcanic area, not extinct – meaning the volcanoes are sleeping, not dead. It’s believed that volcanic activity occurred on the Snake River Plain for millions of years, but Craters of the Moon was formed by eruptions that began about 15,000 years ago. The most recent activity was about 2,100 years ago. Geologists believe the area will become volcanically active again within the next 1,000 years.

US Highway 26 takes us along the northern edge of the monument. The views are otherworldly.

At the western tip of Craters of the Moon, we turn onto US Highway 20, and head toward the tiny community of Picabo, pronounced PEEK-a-boo. The name is said to come from a Native American term translated as silver water.

Picabo was made famous by Picabo Street, an Olympic skler who grew up nearby. Her parents decided to let Picabo choose her own name when she was old enough, so for the first two years of her life she was simply called “baby girl” or “little girl.” At age 3, she was required to have a name in order to get a passport. So she chose Picabo, naming herself after the nearby village of Picabo.

Picabo Street won the gold medal in the Super G at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, and a silver medal in the Downhill at the 1994 Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway. Today, the 50-year-old Street lives in Park City, Utah, where she operates the Picabo Street Academy, an academic center she founded to provide individualized schooling for athletes, artists or anyone who can’t be in a classroom seven hours a day, five days a week, nine months a year.

***

Picabo, the town, is in Blaine County (5B license plates), where we’ll spend the remainder of our day.

We’re now only 30 miles from today’s destination: Ketchum.

We roll through Bellevue, a one-time silver, gold and lead mining town. Five miles north of Bellevue, on Idaho Highway 75, is the town of Hailey, home to the airport for the resort areas of Sun Valley and Ketchum. Hailey is named after John Hailey, a two-time congressional delegate from the Idaho Territory – before Idaho became a state in 1890.

From Hailey, it’s only a 12-mile ride to Ketchum.

Ketchum, with a population of about 3,000, is next to Sun Valley. Both sit in the same valley beneath Bald Mountain, home of the Sun Valley ski area. Ketchum is named for David Ketchum, a local trapper and guide in the 1880s.

After the development of Sun Valley by the Union Pacific Railroad in the 1930s, Ketchum became popular with A-list celebrities, including Gary Cooper and Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway loved the area’s fishing and hunting, and in the late 1950s, he bought a home overlooking the Big Wood River. It was there that he committed suicide in 1959.

The base of the Sun Valley ski resort is just west of Ketchum. The world’s first chairlifts were installed there in 1936. The single-seat chairlift design was adapted by a railroad engineer recalling banana loading conveyer equipment used for tropical fruit ships’ cargo.

Today, Sun Valley is a major destination resort, the first real ski resort in the US. Here, the very idea of an American ski vacation was born.

Every year, when ski magazines come out with their list of best ski areas in North America, or best ski resorts in the West, Sun Valley dukes it out with Aspen Snowmass for the title. In 2020, Aspen Snowmass was top dog. Go Snowmass!

In the shadow of Sun Valley’s now quiet ski lifts, we park our bikes and call it a day.

***

Day Four Summary: 254 miles. Spud mania, Idiot Flats, nuclear meltdowns.

Click here to see today’s complete route from Afton, Wyoming, to Ketchum, Idaho.

Today’s fun facts, favorite foods, funky place names and famous folks:

Wyoming fun fact: The country’s first female governor was elected in Wyoming. After Nellie Tayloe Ross’s husband, Governor William Bradford Ross, died, she was elected to finish his term. She served as the 14th governor of the state from 1925 to 1927, and was later appointed by FDR to serve as the director of the United States Mint.

Idaho fun fact: Idaho is sometimes referred to as the Gem State, its official state nickname. You can find nearly 72 types of precious stones in the state. The mountains of Idaho contain veins of gold, silver, lead, zinc, cobalt, copper, and many other rare minerals. Among these valuable minerals are gems – star garnets, jasper, opal, jade, topaz, zircon, and tourmaline.

Wyoming favorite food: Rocky Mountain oysters (calf testicles!) are considered a delicacy. The best place to find them is at ranch brandings from late March through June, where they’re cut, cleaned, sliced thin and deep-fried on the spot. Not ready for the full-meal deal? Try them as an appetizer at Cavalryman Steakhouse in Laramie.

Idaho favorite food: This should surprise no one, but Idaho’s official state food is the potato. They’re inexpensive, ubiquitous, and tasty. When I lived in Idaho in the 1970s, a person with a big ass shaped like a sack of potatoes was known as a “spud butt.” A unique potato preparation is the Jim Spud, an Idaho potato loaded with six ounces of teriyaki steak scraps, carmelized onions, butter, sour cream, and a mount of melting cheddar cheese. You can get these at the Pioneer Saloon in Ketchum.

Wyoming funky place name: Thermopolis, known as the gateway to Yellowstone, claims to have the world’s largest mineral hot springs. The name comes from the Greek for “hot city.” Therm = heat. Polis = city. Thermopolis is home to Hot Springs State Park, the most visited state park in Wyoming. The springs are open to the public for free, as part of an 1896 treaty signed with the Shoshone and Arapaho Indian tribes.

Idaho funky place name: Montpelier, in southeastern Idaho’s Bear Lake Valley, was first known as Clover Creek, then Belmont, and eventually Montpelier – the name it was given by Brigham Young. He named the town after the capital of his home state of Vermont. Today, Montpelier, Vermont, has a population of about 8,000, making it the least populous state capital in the US.

Wyoming famous folk: Impressionist painter Jackson Pollock was born in Cody, Wyoming. He was known for his highly personalized technique of splashing liquid household paint onto a horizontal surface, a process known as “action painting,” since he used the force of his whole body to paint in an almost frenetic dancing style. It must have worked; his original paintings have sold for up to $200 million. Pollock died in an alcohol-related single-car accident in 1956, at the age of 44.

Idaho famous folk: Actress and supermodel Margaux Hemingway once lived on her famous grandfather Ernest’s farm in Ketchum, Idaho – where we’re staying tonight. (No, we’re not staying at the farm; but we are staying in Ketchum.) In the mid-1970s, Hemingway appeared on the covers of Cosmopolitan, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, and Vogue. After highly publicized episodes of addiction and depression, she died of a drug overdose in 1996 at the age of 42.

Sturgis, anyone?

Vroom.

A look ahead @ tomorrow: Sawing teeth.