Hershey and Harley

Another big day today. Our first stop was the Hershey chocolate factory in Hershey. It's big: much bigger than the Cadbury factory in Tasmania. We didn't go into the factory itself (like the Cadbury tour) but went on a kind of amusement park ride through a tunnel, with life size cow puppets singing, voice over commentary, and mock ups of all the stages of factory production. It was cute, and the quickest introduction to how chocolate bars are made that I've ever seen.
At the end of the tour we got two free samples, and then visited the shop. I couldn't stop smiling: all that chocolate! But I was very restrained (unlike some of my fellow tourists) and only bought some hot chocolate powder and one chocolate bar - and 5 chocolate marshmellow pumpkins on special after Halloween for 50 cents. There was a very cute denim jacket with diamante spelling out Kisses (Hershey are famous for Hershey Kisses) that I managed to resist.

Next stop, at York, was a Harley-Davidson factory. We did quite a long tour with a tour guide of the factory where the custom-built Harley motor cycles are built, and that was fascinating: alll the way from stamping out the basic parts, to laser cutting and trimming, to chroming and painting, to the assembly line, to testing. Too bad they don't give free samples there! In the show room there were several motor cycles that we could sit on and have our photos taken, and of course there was a Harley shop as well.

Next stop was Gettysburg, but it was getting late and so we just had half an hour at the museum - not enough time to visit the battlefields or see the audio-visual presentations. I had run out of books to read (had even reread the Da Vinci Code) so bought "The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All" which I'm enjoying immensely. I seem to remember reading "Oldest Living Confederate General Tells All" some years ago, and this is along the same lines but told from an old woman's point of view.

Then on to the hotel, take away for dinner, and the usual happy hour. I've managed to book a flight on South west airlines from Louisville to St Louis, and a hotel near the St Louis airport for Saturday night, and this blog is now up to date again, so it's all good.

(There's lots of stuff that gets left out of the blog because I can't remember it - after a couple of cocktails - but I think of it later. too bad.)