Return to The No Make-up Tour

There was chocolate in the air...

July 16th - New York City Area to Hershey, PA

We found some beautiful falls on our route from Newburgh to Hershey.

After our big city adventures, we were ready for some small town fun, so we packed up the camper and headed for Hershey, PA. Once again, we didn't expect the trip to take too long (about 3-4 hours), but we weren't counting on it this time.

When we crossed the state line from New York into Pennsylvania, we decided to take a smaller road that ran along a river (that ran along the New Jersey, Pennsylvania state line)... we were risking taking longer, but it let us avoid some of the mountains.

It turned out to be a great decision (if I do say so myself) because the road ran through a National Recreation Area. We had some beautiful scenery along the way, and when we wanted to stop for some lunch, we found a very friendly and helpful park ranger who guided us to perfect picnic area. She was tickled with Tripper (he was their first travelling gnome) and helped him and the girls get passport stamps. Before we headed to our campgrounds, we follwed a boardwalk that took us past 2 beautiful waterfalls. They weren't quite Niagra Falls, but there also weren't so many tourists!

After lunch we got back on the road and ran into some traffic further down the road... it was apparently a tourist area for the Poconos, and this was also their tourist season. But it didn't hold us back too much, and we got into Hershey with plenty of time before sunset. We actually were staying at a KOA outside of Hershey, near a city called Elizabethtown.

The next day we headed into Hershey to tour the factory. It's actually not a real factory tour (those are no longer allowed), but they had set up a small ride that took you on a "virtual" tour and showed you how they made chocolate bars and kisses. Afterwards, we watched a 3-D (actually, 4-D) show where we we got a short history of Hershey (and were pelted by all sorts of special effects). If you've ever seen "It's Tough to Be a Bug" or "Honey, I Shrunk the Audience" at Disney World, it was similar to that. Finally, the girls (and Janet) got to experience life on the factory line by packaging up some Hershey Kisses and sending them down the conveyor line... though I don't think the real factory workers throw kisses at the packages as they go down the line.

After experiencing Hershey World, we headed down the street to the Indian Echo Caverns where we had an interesting tour. Our tour guide, though friendly, really needs to learn how to talk slower and pronounce his words because we couldn't understand most of what he was saying. But it was fun to see the caverns and I think the girls enjoyed themselves.

We then got on the road and headed to Lancaster towards the Toy Train Museum. Along the way, we ended up having an Amish experience, having to pass several horse-drawn buggies full of Amish families. The Train Museum was full of every kind and size of train, and I took a lot of pictures to get some ideas for our layout back home. It was a mostly selfish stop (since I was really the only one interested in trains), but the girls seemed to enjoy getting to control the trains.

It was an ecclectic day of touring, and we got back to the campsite early enough to get our journals up-to-date and watch a couple of movies in the camper. We had originally planned on going to Philadelphia next, but we decided we'd take it easy for the day and get in early into DC.

Return to The No Make-up Tour