Our trip continued south on Friday but with a detour west into Idaho, our ninth state. First up through the Teton Pass then over the state line. Driving through the small town of Victor we spot a fun looking old store advertising an old-fashioned soda fountain, so we had to stop and have our first ever ice-cream soda – and it was delicious! We asked the young lady making it why the air was so hazy this morning and she explained it was due to forest fires over in Wyoming caused by a thunderstorm. And outside we could actually smell smoke in the air.

Our next stop was in Idaho Falls to have a quick look at the town museum with some fine reproductions of the shops of Eagle Rock, which was the first name of the town, and at low falls which give the town its present name. Then onto the smaller town of Blackfoot, right in the middle of the potato district in the USA’s potato state no 1! Of course here was a potato museum – and of course we had to see that! It told the story of how the potato made its way from South America via Europe to the States where every American eats 52.3 pounds of potatoes a year, many of them as fries or chips. Al that talk of potatoes made us hungry so we had a baked potato each in the café and shared an ice-cream potato for dessert.

After that we drove south to Salt Lake City, which took a while in the Friday afternoon rush-hour, to visit our good old friends, Carolyn, Scott and their two children, Kirsten and Kyle. Carolyn was an exchange student in Denmark many years ago (because she has Danish ancestors) and loves everything Danish. We have visited her and her lovely family three times before and we always get a very warm welcome. Today the family had gone on a camping trip up in the mountains behind their house this a campground run by the Mormon church in the Uinta National Forest. So we went to their house, got the key from the rabbit, Oreo, and let us into the house. The fridge was full of nice food so we could eat before Kirsten came home from her summer job at the swimming pool and drove us up to the camp. There the tent had already been pitched and a fire started (each camp site had a brick fire place, table and benches and a pole with a hook to hang a cooler or a bag with food so it wouldn’t attract bears or other animals. No American campfire without s’mores, of course, and a lot of Danish American hygge and catching up among old friends.