We spent Memorial day weekend at Hershey Park in Pennsylvania. Its about 2.5 hours north of DC on the border of Amish country. The weather was great. Mr. Hershey was quite a visionary. He built the town of Hershey, and the empire around the turn of the century. I think he was a visionary somewhat like Walt Disney. He built a city around his business; it was more than the typical "company town" of the era. He built a Hospital, Housing, Street Car system, School for Orphans, a large Community Center, and the Hershey Park. Hershey turned over his entire fortune to the School for Orphans in 1918 - which is now called the Milton Hershey school. It has an 8 Billion dollar endowment - Its the biggest for a K-12 school in the world (Harvard's is like 25B). During the depression, Hershey started 7 big building projects basically forming his on privately funded WPA. Hershey needs the milk from about 50,000 cows daily! so its not by accident that he located it in the middle of dairy country. I was really impressed with the man.
We toured the Chocolate world the first day, and took the street car tour of the area. Chocolate world shows the production process, and shows the history of Hershey. It was very educational - after about the first 30 minutes Catherine and I had our fill of Chocolate for the weekend. Caroline had her first bit of white chocolate - not sure she like it; but she did enjoy wearing the factory hat.
The next day we went to the park all day long. It was really well done, we were there about 10 hours and really never stopped. Catherine rode her first roller coaster - the Trail Blazer - it was a fun, mild ride. She and I rode it 3 or 4 times it was so fun. Feeling our oats, I had the whole family ride on a coaster called the Wild Mouse. Its a 4 person coaster - it looked fairly tame. Catherine and Debbie set in front, Caroline and I in back. After the first turn I realized it was NOT so tame! I almost pulled my shoulder out of joint holding Caroline in. The ride Zig-Zags allot and generates lateral G-Forces. Its considered a 7 out of 10 by roller coaster buffs, it feels like your always about to run off of the track! We were all glad to get off! BUT the coaster riding was not over yet - Catherine and I rode the Lighting Racer - it was a wooden coaster that went up to 50 MPH! we both liked it allot after we were back on solid ground. Debbie and I almost lost it after riding a tilt-a-whirl, but the girls kept going.
The next day we went through Amish country, stopped at a farm where we got to see some Amish animals. The highlight of the day was finding the Sturgis Pretzel company - which has been making pretzels out of a run down factory since 1861 in Lititz, PA (the best part is saying the name). It was a really fun trip, Hershey is really an interesting place.
