A Day in the Life of Napolean Dynamite

I don't know about you and your family, but my family has always loved the movie Napolean Dynamite. It is actually pretty rare for all of us to agree on a movie that we absolutely love, but Napolean Dynamite is one of those movies. We all just thought it was hilarious. So - for Father's Day this year we told my Dad that we wanted to drive up to Preston, Idaho (where the movie was filmed) with him and see all of the Napolean Dynamite sites and do some geo-caching along the way. The movie was filmed almost entirely in Preston, and we had looked up all of the things that we could see there. We FINALLY found the time to get together and go, just a few weekends ago. We were all quoting lines from the movie the entire time and laughing at all the funny things there were to see. 

WARNING: This post will be extremely boring to you if you haven't seen the movie. If you haven't seen it - umm....you need to watch it. And fast!

This is the site of the restaurant where Uncle Rico and Kip get together to talk about their plan to sell nylon polymers. The actual restaurant was torn down and this one was built on top of it, but they kept the same name. It's still called Big J. See all of the Napolean stuff in the background? Of course Dave and I got tots to go with our meal in honor of Napolean. :)

The actual Big J that they filmed at was in Richmond, Utah. So we stopped here before we made it quite to Idaho.

These boys were loving all of the geocaches along the way!

The King's where Summer Wheatley works - it was right on main street.

I thought this was the real gem of the trip. If you know the movie, you'll remember the scene where Deb shows up at Napolean's house asking him if he wants to buy some glamour shots. Napolean says, "No thanks. I already get my hair cut at the Cuttin Corral." Dave and I have always thought that line was hilarious, and we discovered this place on main street! The Cuttin Curral is a real place in Preston!!!

The D.I. where Napolean buys his suit for the dance

This is Napolean's house in the movie...

...and us standing in front of it!

A little while ago, my brother Preston (also a geocacher) had given Dave an awesome container for a geocache. It was a fake piece of poop and Dave and I were just waiting for the right place to put it. Before we left our house, my Dad had the idea to bring it with us to see if we could find somewhere to place the cache up in Preston, all because of this line from the movie:

HAHA!!!!!

When we got up there, we found that there were NO Napolean Dynamite themed caches whatsoever. Pretty weird, right?? So when we got to Napolean's house, we thought this would be the perfect place to put the cache. After going back and forth for a little bit, we finally decided to go in and ask the owner of the house if we could place a cache in his front yard. Luckily, he knew what geocaching was, and was completely fine with it. He was so nice. We decided to place it in a pile of rocks right by his mailbox. 

Dad getting a reading on his GPS for the exact coordinates of the cache. See that little yellowish-orange thing in between the rocks? That's the cache!

Dave is the proud owner of a Napolean Dynamite cache.

As my family talked with the owner, we found out that he has lived in that house forever and was the owner when the movie was filmed. He didn't think the movie was very funny though. We found out that a lot of local residents from Preston didn't think the movie was funny, probably because it hits too close to home. The things in the movie that we think are so funny, are just kind of normal things for them so it doesn't make them laugh as much as it makes us laugh. He told us also that his daughter at one time dated the guy that wrote the movie, Jared Hess, who is from Preston. Pretty small town, huh??

One of the buses from Preston School District

Pedro's house in the movie...

...and his house in real life. Notice the Vote For Pedro sign in the window! :)

Here is Dave pretending to draw a Liger, just like he does in the movie.

We drove up to Preston on a Saturday and were lucky enough to drive by the school at the same time that Student Body Officers from Preston High School were inside decorating for homecoming week. They let us come into the school and take a few pictures. The inside of the school was one of the neatest things, because the lockers look just exactly like they do in the movie.

Here they are in the movie...

...and here they are in real life! My Dad is being the bully that beats up that kid at school for not giving him his lunch money.

The lunchroom where Napolean tells Deb that she could be drinking whole milk if she'd like.

Dave decided to do just a little bit of the dance that Napolean does at the end of the movie in the auditorium, but we did it in front of the lockers because they were more colorful. The music is even the same music from the dance at the end. For a completely improv dance, I thought he did pretty good!

The bowling alley where Kip ALMOST gets a strike with bumpers and really quietly gives himself a fist pump as he walks back to his chair. Dave is doing the fist pump.

This is the site of Rex Kwon Do, even though it doesn't look like it anymore. I'm doing my best karate moves, and they're pretty good for a pregnant lady, wouldn't you say??

Trisha's house. Dave's holding a drawing like the one Napolean drew for Trisha where it took him about an hour to finish the shading on her upper lip. :)

Summer Wheatley's house

The egg farm where Napolean asks the farmer if the chickens have large talons... 

...and Lyle tells the workers that, "over there in that creek bed I found a couple of Shoshone arrowheads." Coming from a family where we would go on trips specifically to go arrowhead hunting, we all found this line to be really really funny. Apparently this guy Lyle is a local from Preston and he really does talk like that. He wasn't "acting" for the sake of the movie. That's just him, which again, explains why people from Preston didn't find the movie very funny.

The school where they play tether ball at the end of the movie. There was no tether ball attached, which is a bummer, so we just pretended.

Our trip to Preston was SOOOO much fun. We had so much fun remembering the funny lines from the movie and just spending time with each other. Once we were finished with the Napolean sites, we found a few more geocaches on our way back home. We stopped and ate dinner at Maddox in Brigham City (delicious!!!), and then came home. It was a fun-filled day, and I'm grateful that we finally found the time to get together with my parents. Now, to end with a short word from Napolean...