…my favorite Bruce Stringbean song
CritterCon 2025 (#18)
Trip Day Two
In which we see a really big bull, take a guided tour of a woodland, visit yet another house built of non-code materials, and hold an impromptu revival meeting.
Having determined that our first toursity stop was about 90 minutes up the road from Boise, I let Data drive while I slept in a bit and then had breakfast with the crew. The kids were all hyped up for another day of adventure, and that kind of leaks off onto us adults.
And so, at 10:00 am, just east of Twin Falls, we stopped to see “The World’s Largest Bull.” Now, in my 71 years, I’ve been to many county and state fairs, and I’ve seen the “World’s Largest” bull/steer/cow/hog/horse/chicken/you name it. Seldom has it been the same individual twice. But then, we knew that going in. Like “World Famous”, it’s a very well used roadside attraction descriptor.
We paid 25 cents per adult and 10 cents per kid under 10 and walked into a big tent to see Hercules, a Hereford bull who was indeed a whole lot bigger than average. Even more amazing was that, despite being a bull, he was quite tame. The kids fed him hay, we took a bunch of pictures, and we bought the only merch they had, a bumper sticker. All told, we were there about 30 minutes. Once we were back oon The Bus, Spotsy asked Blue if they could get a giant bull for their farm. Blue said he’d look into it.
Our next stop was about 2.5 hours away at legal speed, so I took us bnackward in time to 3:00 in the morning, when traffic was almost non-existent, and drove us most of the way there at 80 miles an hour. Thus it was that at high noon, we disembarked for a guided woodland tour of a bit of the Caribou-Targhee National Forest. There were about a dozen other tourists on the tour, and the two rangers, Jack and Ed, started us off on a one hour walk.
After about 20 minutes, things began to go a bit off the rails thanks to our NHT contingent. It started with Munchkin smelling a bear about 5 minutes before we saw it, then moved on to Charlie starting to chase a squirrel, and then several other events where their NHT instincts overrode their need to act human. It didn’t help that some of the older NHT got a bit twitchy at times, too. By the time we got back to the ranger station, everyone was giving us strange looks. We quickly bought a shitload of t-shirts and left.
We ate lunch on The Bus, had the kids take a nap, and generally just hun out until we reached our next stop at Big Timber, Montana, where we saw the, you guessed it, World Famous Tin Can House. Thanks to a cloaking device and the ability to fly, we shaved an hour off of the 4 hours it would have taken us to get there.
I’ll point out here that roadside attractions in the northern part of the USA back in 1964 were a bit thin, so you take what you can get.
Like all of the many houses we have seen that were built from goofy stuff, including, but by no means limited to…
House Built Of Whiskey Bottles
The Leaning Rock House
World Famous Button House
World Famous Driftwood House
World Famous Manure Mansion
The World Famous Gator House
The House Of Blue Glass
…this house was not really big, but was indeed built of tin cans of all sizes. Now, you might think that would make for a light and noisy in a rainstorm house, but you’d be wrong. You see, Sarah Griffon and Mary Higgins, “lifelong friends and roomates” who started building the house in 1900, filled the cans with concrete, thus making the 6 room house strong and durable. They had only recently died in 1960 (Sarah) and 1962 (Mary), so the place looked nice. It belongs to their niece, Ellen Brisbee (who herself died in 1977), who charges 10 cents a head to come in and look around. All in all a nice little tourist stop.
By the way, in 1986, the house was gifted to the town of Big Timber. It is still open for viewing in 2025, but will cost you $3.00 per for the guided tour.
With our stop for the night being 3+ hours and 226 miles up the road, I once again got us cloaked and flying and we arrived a mere 93 minutes later at the Smiling Cowboy Campground just after 6:00 pm. We set up our tents for the kids and adults while Blue and Avis got the grill going. Later, after we had dined on burgers, hot dogs, and all the assorted side dishes, we just sat around talking and relaxing.
But remember, our beloved Bus was done up to look like a church bus from California, which is why a group of folks from the next camp over asked me if I could do a bit of preaching tonight, seeing as how Sunday they would be on the road to Missoula for their great-grandmother’s 100th birthday.
Being the 100% country ham actor that I am, and being a nice guy, too, I said sure, I’d do it. Note that this has happened a couple of other times on our trips, so my traveling companions played along.
And so, I started in preaching the Gospel of peace, love, understanding, and the respect for Nature, surely God’s greatest creation. The 16 members of the Franks family were soon joined by other campers and after a while, we had a pretty good crowd built up. Once I got into the swing of things, I preached off and on, breaking for songs, for about 45 minutes. Afterward, most of those assembled thanked me and shook my hand, saying it was an excellent sermon. Later, I found out that Gabe and Blue had passed the donation trays around and we’d made $26.82.
Sometimes I think that despite my atheism, I missed my calling.
Our little revival meeting over, we went back to relaxing as the kids dropped off to sleep.
More reportage tomorrow.
Destination Sign When We Started: Fraggle Rock
Destination Sign When We Stopped: Surf City
QM Radio Station: KRZY Best of the 1960s
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