Potatoes and Apples

Tuesday, September 22, 2015, dawned clear and damp after an overnight rain. We debated about what to do on our last day in Harrisburg, and decided on two things:

On the recommendation of our good friends, Ed and Rosemary, we visited the Martin's Potato Chip factory in York, PA.

Clad in our best hairnets, we joined our guide, Barry, on an in-depth tour of the facility.

The potatoes arrive by truck from as far away as Florida, and as the season progresses, up the east coast, and on into Michigan in October. The potatoes are unloaded into bins and sent into the washing facility.

After cleaning, the spuds are sent into a fancy machine that slices them and removes any imperfections.

The chips are cooked and stirred for about 10 minutes.

Then unceremoniously dumped onto a conveyer belt.

And sent to the salting and flavoring machines.

Eventually the finished chips are bagged and sent to a packing area where three people work on inserting the bags into reusable cardboard boxes.

These boxes of chips represent about two to three days supply of product!

Martin's makes a number of different flavored chips, some more appealing to us than others…..

Our other activity for Tuesday was going to be a tour of the Harley Davidson factory just east of York, Pennsylvania, but overnight the iPhone with the new (unusable) app from Gettysburg decided to freeze, so we had to find an Apple Store pronto! Fortunately, there is one in the town of Lancaster, PA, just another 25 miles east or so of York, so we skipped HD and went to Apple, where, with some wringing of hands and pleading of insanity, we were able to find a tech who could help us. It took awhile, and a complete wipe and restore, but the phone is back! Yeahhhh!

Too late now for the HD tour, we zipped back to Harrisburg and prepped for departure. Whew! What a couple of days this has been!