Vacation to Idaho

Our road trip to Idaho over Fall Break was a lot of fun. We went and stayed with the Nygaard family and had a great time. We split the drive up there into two days but on the way home we decided just to tough it out and drive the full 8 hours.

Here are some pictures of the drive up:

It turns out that it was the end of the Spud Harvest in Rexburg while we were there, so we were able to get a tour of a Potato Farm in action.

Here, the trucks that have just returned from the field, back up to the conveyor-belts to empty out all the potatoes.

A truck emptying it's load of potatoes.

The potatoes go from the truck to the conveyor-belt and workers stand here and watch for and pull out items other than potatoes (i.e. rocks, dead birds, dead skunks, etc...).

The potatoes then go up this conveyor-belt into a new container.

The conveyor-belt would then bring the potatoes through the little enclosure which helps hide the workers from the outside elements. Inside the enclosure workers are pulling out any unwanted items off the conveyor-belt that may have been missed.

The conveyor-belt then takes the potatoes into the cellar where they are kept in a temperature regulated environment until it's time to be shipped for sale. 

This is inside the cellar - see the mountain of potatoes at the back.

I have never seen so many potatoes. I have also never thought about all that goes into getting potatoes - before this, if I wanted some potatoes I would just go to the produce aisle at the grocery store and that was that. 

After our tour of the potato farm we stopped to look at a cellar no longer in use.

Here is the outside view - what you can't see is the roof. The roof is covered in dirt and sod.

This is the inside view.

Here we are standing underneath where the roof caved in - very safe.

Bryce went on a ride with Josh in one of the trucks that was out in the field getting potatoes from this other truck/machine that was pulling the potatoes out of the ground (not sure of all the technical/correct terms). Each trip to the field took about an hour so while Bryce was doing that I went with Heather to walk around BYU-Idaho. I wish I had had the camera then because the gardens there were amazing! 

We played a lot of 'hand and foot' with the Nygaards and now we are determined to play more - so as soon as we got home we went out and bought a few deck of cards. 

It was only a few days, but the trip was a nice break from work and school for both of us and we hope to be able to go up again.