I have to admit that as I pondered attending the Napoleon Dynamite Festival in Preston, Idaho, I wasn't sure what to expect. The image I had in my mind of how small Preston was, combined with the number of fans I had heard they were expecting, conjured images I had seen of the early Woodstock festivals. You know, people everywhere, many of them a little "different", and not enough bathrooms, food, and water to go around. If this is what the Napoleon Dynamite Festival was going to be, then that wasn't my idea of a great way to spend a weekend with the family! Nevertheless, the kids were begging me to go, and I knew that I had to get some coverage of the festival for the website, so off we went…

As we approached the city limits of Preston one of the first things I noticed was that Preston wasn’t nearly as small as I expected it to be. I’m not sure exactly what I had in mind, but as I’ve already said, I was prepared for a tiny little town out in the middle of nowhere, that was stuck somewhere back in the 80’s. I mean, isn’t that the kind of town Napoleon Dynamite lived in? But Preston is not that kind of town. Sure, it’s small, but it has all the comforts of home. It does have a certain quaintness about it, and a main street that is only a few blocks long, but there are plenty of stores, homes, parks, gas stations, and things like that to make you feel like you’re “not so far away”.

Once we saw the “Welcome To Preston” sign at the city limits, I knew we were in the right place, because right below the “Welcome” sign is another one that says “Home of Napoleon Dynamite”. On a fence nearby was a large banner that proudly announced “Napoleon Dynamite Festival”. I pulled off to the side of the road to get some pictures, and even though they were obviously expecting camera happy folks like myself, I did feel a little self conscious standing there taking pictures, as cars on US-91 whizzed by. I was sure they were all muttering to themselves something about “… another one of those silly Napoleon Dynamite fans”. In spite of my embarrassment, I was able to get some nice pictures to validate that I had, in fact, entered the real Preston, Idaho, the “Home of Napoleon Dynamite”.

Now remember one of the other concerns I had about there being “people everywhere”? Well we hit the road that morning a bit later than we intended, and we were rolling into town about 11am, so I thought that there would be lines of cars, endless sightings of “Vote for Pedro” shirts, and lots of “Gosh!” exclamations as we were all forced to wait for these small town folks to deal with the traffic situation. Well that wasn’t the case at all. In fact, aside from the signs that I just took pictures of, this looked like a normal day in Preston. (Like I’m qualified to know what a “normal” day in Preston looks like...) I kept looking for signs of other Napoleon Dynamite fans in passing vehicles, and I couldn’t find any.

As we continued further into town, one of the first movie “landmarks” that we noticed was the Pop N Pins bowling alley, and of course, they had a big “Napoleon Dynamite Festival” banner out front also, but no adoring Napoleon Dynamite fans were to be seen. We began to approach the main part of town, onto “main street” (which is actually “State Street” or US-91 for you map lovers), and we continued to see banners and signs on businesses welcoming the Napoleon fans, but still no fans. We saw some vendors on the sidewalks with various Napoleon Dynamite merchandise, but we didn’t see any customers. Where were the crowds? Where were all the Napoleon Dynamite fans? Where were all the "Vote For Pedro" shirts? I knew we had the right place… was this the right day?