Spud Day

*All photos courtesy of Seth's wonderful brother Scott. Thanks!

For years I've been hearing about the infamous Spud Day in Shelley, Idaho. I've constantly begged Seth for the opportunity to experience the starchy goodness of free baked potatoes and mashed potato tug-o-war and this year I was given the honor of making the pilgrimage to Potato Land for this wonderful occasion.

To make the trip even more exciting, a couple additions were added to the list of activities and attractions. First, Seth's brother, Scott and his wife Amanda were going to be in town. They are currently living in Houston, Texas and have a baby girl on the way. Getting to spend some time with them was on the top of our list.

As great as Spud Day would be with Scott and Amanda around, we added yet another source of excitement. The Spud Run. Yes, we signed up for another 5k. I mainly wanted to do the Spud Run so I could get a shirt with potatoes on it, and let me tell you, I wasn't disappointed.

The Spud Run started early Saturday morning (7:30!) and it was pretty chilly outside. Seth and I were the only ones in the family that ran this 5k, which meant we had a lot of people there to cheer us on. For this race they gave us actual race numbers that we pinned on our shirts, which we thought was pretty cool. And the blue t-shirts with running potatoes on it were amazing. That all combined with a real starting gun was almost too much to handle. It was like a REAL race!

Pre-race with our numbers & a view of the legendary Spud Run t-shirt.

Everyone standing around freezing, waiting for the race to start.

I was pretty nervous during the morning of the race (like usual) and that anxiousness combined with an early cold morning made the run feel twice as long. I felt so shaky and weird for the first little segment that I thought about dropping out. But, I told my body to just keep going and what do you know? I made it!

And the race begins... notice the Potato mascots in the road.

Seth and I ended up coming in one second apart... 28:08 and 28:09. A new record! Although in the "Shelley Pioneer" and on the Shelley website, everybody's times are 2 minutes off... it shows our times as 26:09. Which would be super fast for me. But I'm not complaining. Especially because once again I came in 5th place out of all the women! WOO HOO!! I don't know how that happened! Maybe this is an unconscious tradition? I'm not sure what place I was in my age group. Seth came in 17th place out of the guys, but the men put up some pretty stiff competition. Still, there were 114 runners, 48 men and 66 women, so we both did awesome. We were in the top 25%!

Seth coming through the finish line. I got confused and went in the wrong lane.

Seth had to hold up my arm. I was too tired to do it myself.

After the race we went and watched the Spud Day Parade. Neither of us had been to a parade for years. It was fun watching all the kids chase after the candy thrown from the paradees. We also had a famous family member in the parade! Arielle was on a float with her middle school volleyball team and looked pretty cool in her red and black uniform. We made sure to throw her some candy because apparently that's what the kids do these days when they see a float they like.

When the parade was over Seth and I went and checked out the park where all the booths were set up. It was really crowded and the line for the free baked potatoes was huge, so we ended up leaving. Luckily it was Tessa's birthday party that night so we got to have a baked potato and a funnel cake over at her house.

As would be expected, our free time was filled with fishing trips. I didn't catch a fish the whole weekend, but at least I got to fish the Snake River and the Henry's Fork. You can bet I'll be back and next time I'll be taking names.

On Monday before we left for home, we went up to Harriman State Park. Seth and I got there a couple hours early to fish (this was the Henry's Fork trip I mentioned above). We were hoping to hear some elk bugle and were lucky enough to hear a few loud calls when we first arrived. It was pretty cool.

The rest of the family showed up a couple hours later and we did a small hike around the park. We didn't hear anymore elk but we did see some deer and a couple beautiful lakes.

A cute pregnant Amanda on our Harriman hike.

We had a great long weekend up in Idaho and Spud Day was all I have ever dreamed it would be and more. I'm sure we'll be back again.