The Potato Museum

As I sat down readying myself to write a new post all about our adventures in Washington at Thanksgiving I realized that I had inadvertently forgotten to write about one of our greatest excursions to date in our Idaho experience: The Potato Museum. Yes indeed, the "world famous" Potato Museum. Days before we left for Gramma Sarah's house we decided we had already waited too long to visit this Idaho hot spot. So on a somewhat chilly day we drove down the road about twenty minutes to Blackfoot to learn about potatoes, their history, how they are grown, why Idaho makes such a great place to grow them and how to spell the word "potato" so we never make a nationally known blunder.


No, you are not mistaken. This is a potato signed by former Vice President Dan Quayle. Interestingly, potatoes can last quite a long time if they are properly dehydrated and this was discovered by the Inca, who were the first known culture to cultivate the potato.


Generally speaking, Idaho potato farming has evolved somewhat from the above example, but from Luke's enthusiasm you might think he had won the Idaho lottery by discovering the proper plowing technique.

Thanks to Vanna 1, 2 and 3 you can see that this is the world's largest fake potato. You, too, could win this if the "Price is Right" (Ok, I know I'm mixing up the game shows!).

And here is yet another example of fake potatoes, although this was actually created from potato product: the world's largest potato chip.

I really could go on and on about what we learned because we actually stayed for over an hour in a place where the average museum goer would have experienced museum fatigue within about 10 minutes. But not this group! No, we did not tire for quite some time. But in the end, we did need to have a more hands on approach to potatoes...

...McDonald's and its truly modern, highly developed, greatly processed potato known as: the french fry.