Gettin' Down & Dirty at the Museum of Clean!

Hi Blog!  As you know, we can't start our day without a cup of coffee and a walk.  Today we took a spin around the mobile home park next to our campground.  Many of the mobile homes were typical park models.  However, we came across this old Spartan Trailer.  After World War II, J. Paul Getty turned his aircraft plant into a mobile home manufacturer. He started production in 1945 and continued producing travel trailers until 1962. This beauty looked like she just rolled off the assembly line!

Today the plan was to bicycle around town and hit a few museums.  On the way we passed this lovely cemetery - originally known as Mt. Moriah Cemetery and currently known as Mountain View Cemetery.  The Pocatello area is very dry with lots of sage brush and rolling brown hills.  However, this cemetery is a green oasis with rows and rows of shade trees and tons of green grass.  You can tell for folks that live in the desert all their life, they would look at this place as a little slice of heaven.

Idaho State University is located just a few block from our campground which means lots of student housing, sandwich shops and coffee houses.  We stopped at Mocha Madness for another coffee infusion before hitting Elmer's Restaurant for a down-home country style breakfast.  It reminded us of Dave's mom, who always invited us to breakfast at Elmer's in Tigard, Oregon when we visited her.

After breakfast, we headed over to the Museum of Clean. We knew nothing of this establishment other than what we read on Trip Advisor that it was the number one rated museum in the Pocatello area.  All the reviews were "fantastic" or "a must stop." However, it did not prepare us for what we found when we got there.  We figured from the name, that it must be about cleaning stuff.

We enter the building and there sitting on the counter are these little toilet toys.  Dave picks one up and it promptly squirts him with a stream of water.  Kathy falls on the counter in hysterics. The museum staff being used to this phenomenon merely smile.  No sooner do we pay our admission, then the next couple comes in and we could barely contain ourselves as the young gentleman picks up the toilet and promptly gets squirted.

We were told after we purchased our tickets that we were in luck, Don would be giving us a tour of the museum.  I had no idea who Don Aslett was before our tour.  Here I am being wheeled around the museum by an international multi-millionaire cleaning celebrity.  He is a philanthrophist boy scout with his own QVC spot. We thought he was a really fun guy.  He had a great sense of humor that was displayed all over the museum.

Case in point, the giant "Caution Wet Floors" sign that we posed behind.

The museum is just chock full of all kinds of gadgets invented for the purpose of cleaning.  Everything from ancient brooms, vacuums, toilets and our personal favorite, the old bath tubs with Daddy Bear, Mommy Bear and Baby Bear.

Not only did Don give us a tour of all the current exhibits, he took us behind the scenes to show us the additional floors of the museum that are still under construction and his vision of how the space will be used.  We even got a chance to see the inside of the clock tower at the top of the five story structure.

The exhibits in the building are all about "clean" - vacuums, washers, soap, brooms, dust pans - but that is only part of the story.  The real story is how "clean"  and "green" the building itself is.  The Museum of Clean is working to be the "greenest" building in the country.  They recycle all of the rainwater that falls on the structure.  The lighting is all LED and motion sensor. The building was originally built in 1916 and everything inside has been recycled and repurposed, including the old outhouse.

We didn't take a photo of the old boiler, but the entire area has been reused and devoted to the history of chimney sweeps!   This museum totally exceeded our expectations.  If you are ever in Idaho, make sure you stop in Pocatello and visit the Museum of Clean.  You won't be disappointed.