Type: Long Trip (Multiple Days)/Day Trip
Distance: 263 miles
Drive Time: 5 hours 7 min according to Google Map
So, this was a family trip, not a motorcycle trip. I got a couple of days off in exchange of working over a weekend. We wanted to go somewhere. Camping was out of the question since a storm was approaching. Well, we decided to visit Hershey, PA. Yes, that Hershey, where Hershey chocolate are made. Actually, I learned while I visited there, the Hersey chocolate made the town of Hershey. (It is close enough to make it a day trip if you like, but there is a lot to do.)
From Point A (Point E) to Point B to Point C:
We left around 9:00 after breakfast and drove almost non-stop to Hershey. However, I need to point out that town of York is on the route (Point B). York is where Harley Davidson is made. They do offer factory tour, but children under 12 years old are not permitted, so I skipped it this time. Maybe I will bike over next time. Although it is interstate, the route does not look too bad for bike ride.
Point C:
It was around 10:45 when we got to the town of Hershey. When you enter downtown, the pavement turns to chocolate brown, and the street lights on main street (Chocolate Avenue) are Hershey's Kisses. Some are peeled and some are wrapped in wrapper. (We stayed in a motel on Cocoa Ave)
Let me go ahead and talk about the town before the day's business. Hershey is a well groomed city with many amenity, including a large amusement park with water park, a zoo, a theatre, a major hospital, educational facility, etc. Most of which was built by Milton S. Hershey, as a benefit to his employees at candy factory. In 1905, he built his candy factory in the middle of nowhere, just a farmland. People started to come in to the place to work for the factory. He set up a financial vehicle so that these employee could purchase home, and started to build a town. He believed that employee should have healthy, happy life. So, he built these amenity as for the new town folk and invited sports clubs and broadway theatre companies. The result is a thriving town that is Hershey PA today. He apparently did not have a children, and wife passed away before old, and gave away all of his fortune to the school for underprivileged children that he built. Quite a guy. One can dream of utopia, and believe in good of humanity. Making them true is quite another.
 |
| Milton S. Hershey School |
 |
| Milton Hershey's House. |
 |
| Yes! The worlds largest chocolate factory! Actually, the factory is no longer in operation. They have newer facility elsewhere in town. |
Now that we are in town, first order of business is Hershey's Chocolate World. It is a factory store and fun house. The first thing we did was to take a ride in a simulated factory tour, where singing cows (yes, milk is important for milk chocolate.) teaches you how to make a confectionary from cocoa beans. Our kids enjoyed it so much, we rode it twice. Of course, they gave us samples before releasing us to a factory store.
Besides the tour, they have attractions such as Create Your Own Candy Bar (you program the computer and a machine make it for you.), Design Studio (it's a candy store that let you design and decorate sweets), etc. It also offer's a tour of town in a trolly bus (it's more entertaining than informative. They also kept feeding us candy) We spent about 5 hours in this facility.
Next day, we went to Hershey Story Museum. The name says it all. It is a museum about the story of Milton Hershey, the Hershey Chocolate, and the town of Hershey. It was a kind of cool to know that he got the idea of adding milk to candy while he was working in Denver. Anyway, one of the points museum made was an analogy for Hershey's chocolate making to Henry Ford's car production. They brought the luxury item down to ordinary people by introducing assembly line mass production.
 |
| I kind of liked this. It is a bath tub. They put a wheel to move around large quantity of stuff. A sign of innovation. When I was working for small company, we did many kludge similar to this. |
 |
| Old Kiss Wrapping Machine |
In the cafe in the museum, we tried chocolate tasting. You get to taste chocolate made from the cocoa beans harvested in the different parts of the world. I highly recommend this. It was an eye opener. The chocolate was surprisingly different from one place to the other. My, and my older daughter's favorite was Ghana. It was kind of fruity, honey taste. Second daughter liked Java, a kind of similar to Ghana but less fruitiness. My wife liked Tanzania, robust, dark taste. Mexico was least popular, a bit sour.
Point D:
We drove through Pennsylvania Dutch (Amish) country on the way home, stopping by Intercourse PA (yes, it is an actual name of the town, since 1814). This is a town where the movie Witness was shot. Amish people and English (they call non-amish this way) work side by side in this town. People were driving horse drown buggies and pedal powered scooters. I did not take any pictures though. I hear they don't like that. I wouldn't like it if I was them. Some place had "please do not take photos" posted. However, I could not help taking this picture.
Point E:
We got home before sunset. It was a nice trip.
No comments:
Post a Comment