Up and on the road again. Blue skies and sunshine less yesterday's wind. Breakfast at the hotel was poor, really poor. I am not sure those "eggs" were really eggs. We need to find a Starbucks or a Cracker Barrel.
Fortunately we found a Starbucks along the highway and got our caffeine addiction satisfied for the moment
. On to Hershey Pennsylvania. Rolling fields with dairy farms here and there. As we passed through Harrisburg we spotted the Pennsylvania state capital and numerous humongous distribution warehouses. One for Target was even ginormous!
In Hershey we drove around following the signs to ChocolateWorld. Now we enjoyed some of what ChocolateWorld had to offer and some we were less than impressed with. So here is the Ammon Family review of Hershey's ChocolateWorld.
* Trolley tour of Hershey - 4 thumbs up.
* 4D Hershey Movie - 4 thumbs down.
* Create your own Candy Bar - 3 thumbs up.
The trolley tour takes you around Hershey pointing out some cool and historical spots. You go past the old factory, the employee housing, the Mansion that Milton Hershey lived in, the Hershey Hotel, and the coolest was the Milton Hershey School. More on the school in a moment. They give you sample chocolates along the way as well - BONUS.
The 4D movie actually made us dumber for the 30 minutes of time it stole from us
. Seriously, unless you have 2 year old with the mental ability of a 1 year old - DO NOT GO! You learn nothing, it mists chocolate smelling water on you, and you have to wear dirty glasses. Did I mention DO NOT GO?!?! Moving on...
The create your own candy bar is worth is just because you have to wear a hairnet and apron. Check the picture! We have not tasted our candy bars so we cannot speak to their potential to be the next big chocolate sensation. The experience is pretty cool because you get to see the sophisticated, computer controlled assembly system in action. The equipment is super precise, depositing just the right amount of ingredients without spilling or wasting any. After you decide Milk, Dark, or White chocolate you add some fillers like toffee, pretzels, chocolate chips or rice crispies. Your bar begins production and you move on to designing you personal wrapper for you candy bar. At the end of production you get your candy bar in a box, inside a tin, with your custom wrapper over that
. The kids liked it, Lauralee and I could have skipped it.
So the Hershey Milton School is an amazing legacy that the Hershey's left. Milton and his wife could not have kids, and when his wife died, Milton funded the school in her honor. Today the school has a 10 Billion dollar trust that keeps the school in operation. The school is for orphans or disadvantaged kids from the US. The school is K-12 and has about 2,000 students. All students live in student homes. Each home is gender specific and has a house parent couple who are married. Their full time job is being parents to kids in their house. The school receives 10,000 inquires each year, and about 2,000 applications. The school is not a reform school so students must pass academic, financial need, and behavioral interviews. 90% of the graduates from the Hershey Milton School go on to college. Each student who goes on to college receives a scholarship of $88,000 - free. The campus is amazing - looks like a college campus
.
After our tours and activities at ChocolateWorld we headed up the hill to explore the Hershey Hotel. Built in 1933 the hotel is a 4 star property known for it's spa. They feature numerous treatments featuring, you guessed it, chocolate. The hotel had a unique fountain lobby and some great views overlooking the Hershey factories, theme park, schools and ChocolateWorld.
Oh yeah, we did not go to the theme park because it was not yet open for the season. It did have some really crazy looking rollercoasters,. Also the Hershey Arena is where Wilt Chamberlin set the NBA record for points by a single player in a game at 100 points.
We set off to see some of the Dutch Amish countryside. Today is Sunday and NOTHING is open in Dutch Amish country on Sunday. I planned it that way and Lauralee was not pleased. The dairy farms are everywhere and large. Large homes that likely have large multi-generational families living in them
. We saw lots of horse drawn buggies. The buggies are small and drawn by a single horse. The buggies have reflectors on the back, turn signals and side view mirrors. The driver is seated on the right side and it looks like there is room for 3 or 4 people total. Most of the buggies seemed to be driven by younger men. We also saw Amish families walking along the roads and a group of teenage kids playing volleyball in the yard of one large dairy farm. Passing a couple of the farms rendered a strong, unpleasant farm odor.
We drove on to Delaware and found our hotel just outside Wilmington. Time for dinner so we headed for downtown Wilmington. We found the restaurant in "Little Italy" but is was right next to a neighborhood where we were likely to find our minivan up on blocks with the wheels missing after dinner. We kept driving. Just a couple blocks from our hotel we found a nice wood fire grill restaurant that had good food and best of all we still had wheels when we finished. Overall we have not been impressed with Delaware. Wilmington had some cool buildings downtown but the surrounding neighborhoods were very interesting. Maybe Dover and the costal portions of Delaware are better.
Hershey, Lancaster, Wilmington
Sunday, April 06, 2014
Wilmington, Delaware, United States
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