Recently, we did the Diet Coke & Mentos deal for Science Night. The same night my Lab Coat arrived in the mail so I could completely nerd out for fun. Ever since, we have been trying to figure out how to rocket propel other things.

At the bus stop yesterday, Ben came up with a crazy idea for next week’s Science Night. He wants to do a Water Bottle Derby Race, making race cars out of water bottles, and filling them with diet coke, dropping in a mentos, and making them rocket-boosted race cars.

Friday was the anniversary of the Yellowstone National Park, which was established on March 1, 1872. We watched this amazing video of the sights and sounds of Yellowstone, which included lots of footage of Old Faithful, the geyser that shoots water way up into the sky repeatedly, rhythmically, and has for hundreds of years apparently. We got a kick out of thinking that this was nature’s way of having fun and shocking and amazing people – like with a crazy science experiment.

We looked it up on Google Maps and found that we could make a trip to Yellowstone and it would only take 16 hours to get there – possibly one day of driving, probably two. But then, we noticed that we could take a short cut down into Utah, and see the Bonneville Speedway at the Salt Flats, and that would be ever so worth the extra miles.

My boys idolize the Salt Flats after learning about Burt Munro and the Land Speed Records he Beat at the Salt Flats over 40 years ago. (Movie – The World’s Fastest Indian) I have only written about various incarnations of their adoration of him a half dozen times.