Bits for Sunday, May 31, 2009

One hour and thirty seven minutes. That’s all the freedom I have left in a glorious vacation.

Tomorrow I re-enter the world of alarm clocks, the pink day planner, grocery shopping, cleaning, and financial aid.

I’ve written before about Bekah-vacations, which usually include a significant list of chores to be done around the house, scrapbooks to complete, cards to make, and naps to savor.

Not this time.

This time, I took a for-real, leave-the-state, book-a-hotel vacation. I know. It boggles the mind, but it’s true.

Growing up, I watched my mom plan our family vacations. She pored over AAA books, made hotel reservations weeks in advance, saved money from all the budgets to cover things like food and gas, bought little presents to keep me entertained along the route, filled a cooler with snacks and drinks, and made sure the camera was at the ready to capture each vacation-y moment.
I learned well.

I won’t bother to tell you how many hours I spent poring over AAA books, reading dozens of hotel reviews, and searching any site I could find for fun things to do. An entire page in my day planner was devoted to the budget, the packing list, and the things-to-do-before-I-go reminders.

There are times when it pays to have some OCD blood and other times it gets really annoying. This was kind of a combo of the two. I lovingly sealed and stamped all the cards that would need to be mailed while I was gone and left them in the capable care of a co-worker…with little purple sticky notes informing her of the day each should be mailed. I divided my funds into little envelopes, each carefully marked with its designation. I typed out two pages of instructions for my house sitter and monitored the levels of cat litter and food to make sure they were well-stocked. The car enjoyed a tire rotation, a bit of repair for the death rattle it had begun to make, and even a new windshield wiper for the passenger. I stalked the weather channel to make informed packing decisions. I pre-chilled the water bottles for the cooler and purchased health-conscious snacks for the snack bag.

And promptly at 7:30 on Tuesday morning, I deposited the last of my luggage in the living room to await the arrival of my friend who had so graciously agreed to travel with me. We strategically packed my car, scurried through a drive-thru for the must-have traveling caffeine and within an hour were blissfully unaware that we were lost, despite an atlas and OCD-induced printed instructions from my front porch to the hotel’s lobby.

Once we found our way back to the right road…we ventured forth, and ten hours and four states later, we arrived in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Land of the chocolate and home of the sweet. We spent a couple of days there, touring gorgeous gardens, sampling the healthy antioxidant loaded chocolate treats, getting lost (thanks to the lousy local map provided at the hotel…though not published by the hotel) and making our very own waffles at the hotel breakfast bar. We took a combined total of almost 300 pictures, laughed at the road signs littering the state of Pennsylvania, learned we do not look good in hairnets, dodged the massive herds of field trip participants, and developed an idea for the new and improved car horn, which should have various sounds for various situations.

I would prattle on about the trip, but I already did in the 17 posts below!! Over on the right is a Virtual Vacation list if you want to look at posts in order.

Enjoy!

Meanwhile, I must begin to think about getting to bed at a decent hour.

Virtual Vacation: The End!

** I made a side bar called "Virtual Vacation" if you want to look at the posts in order. They are somewhat backwards if you go through them like I have them here. **

Well, all good things must come to an end. So after loading up on treasures at the scrapbook store, Amber and I headed home. We intended to only drive halfway, stay at some random hotel, and then drive on in Friday morning. But we were both ready to come home, and saving the other night's hotel money didn't sound so bad either, so we came all the way home Thursday night.

I drove the turnpike this time, and about halfway through, we could tell a storm was about to let loose. Driving 70 in a rainstorm in the mountains did not sound fun to me.


The guy in front of me put on his flashers, and I was so glad he did. I might have hit him otherwise. I was too afraid to pull over - afraid someone wouldn't see me and would wipe me out.

But we made it through the rainstorm, through a couple more...and all the way home.

Here were some of our favorite road signs:

There is also a Husband, PA, and an Intercourse, PA, but we only saw a sign for Lover.

We arrived home about 12:30. By the time I carried things out of the car and sat on my bed, the clock said 12:41.

Amber and I are still friends, we had fun, and I'd visit Hershey again if I ever have the chance!

Virtual Vacation: Last Stop - Chocolate World!

Thursday was our last day to be in Hershey, so we saved our trip to Chocolate World for then. I had no idea it was such a popular field trip destination. Pretty sure we didn't take field trips to such places when I was in school. At times we were overwhelmed by massive herds of children, but overall it was a fun place to go.

Nice bonus: 2 hours and under = free parking. Love that! We made sure to get in and out right at two hours.

Our first stop in Chocolate World was the tour. We sat in little cars that resembled sleighs, and rode through a factory tour of how chocolate is made from cocoa beans clear through until packaging. It was great, but I needed to ride it about three times. Trying to take in all the sights (and smells!) can't be done in one trip.

These lovely cows serenaded us at different points throughout the ride.

A vat of chocolate. Seriously - can life be any better?

Filling the syrup bottles. Again I say...can life be any better?

The production counter. I knew this world contains a lot of chocolate, but these numbers blew my mind. We were there at 11:30 in the morning!

If I could have reached through the glass......

Amber on the ride...

Me on the ride. At the end, they told you to look up for a picture, and then the pictures were available for purchase. Unfortunately I was talking (shocker!) during ours so we opted out of the $9.95 and just used these that we took.

At the end of the ride, we were given our very own tiny candy bar. I'd learned about that part of the adventure from watching Jon and Kate Plus 8. They did an episode at Chocolate World.

Virtual Vacation: Chocolate Lunch

Chocolate is lunch, right? :)

We thought so.

This was the Hershey Bake Shoppe, which had some absolutely sinful treats.

Such as....

...or even worse....

We opted to do fondue. There was a chocolate fountain with an eternal source of rich fondue...and the nice lady behind the counter made these for us. Cups of fondue, brownie, chocolate chips, whipped cream, more chocolate chips, and as if that wasn't enough...a sliver of Hershey bar.

Oh yeah.

Amber went for dark chocolate (antioxidants, you know) and I opted for milk chocolate (dairy, you know).

Couldn't possibly be happier.

Guess who won???

Not me.

Virtual Vacation: The Bake Shoppe Store

After we finished our little riding tour, we hit the Bake Shoppe store. This had several activities you could do, but we'd already caught glimpses of the gift shop (see post below) and were into saving money. But just to give you an idea...you could have your picture taken and put on a candy bar wrapper. You could get an ID and become a factory worker for a minute. And you could personalize the little tissue paper that sticks out of a Hershey kiss.

Instead, we took pictures. :) This is just a view of the front of the store...


Upstairs was the Kit Kat Cafe, where you could get hot dogs, sandwiches, and blizzard-like treats. There were several tables and chairs up there - including this one hidden behind the Reese's sign and curtain.

This was the view from the table where we sat while we ate our fondue. These panels rotated. One side was painted like four Hershey bars side by side. This other side showed glimpses of their different candy logos.

I wanted to try this but I thought you had to pay to do it. You could turn the wheel (like the girl in the pink shorts at the bottom of the picture) and kisses would come down the chute to fill a bag. Pretty cool!

Where is Bekah?? Oh there she is! Right by the chocolate.

Amber with the world's largest Hershey bar. I didn't even look at how many fat grams were in that one!

Virtual Vacation: Shopping at Chocolate World

The last thing we did before coming home was shop in the massive string of gift shops in Chocolate World. It was especially perilous since all the field trip kids were turned loose in the shopping arena...but we managed.

I wanted to get gifts that seemed at least a bit unique, so I stopped at this custom molded chocolates store.
Got this for Olivia, who took care of my house, my plants, and Kaegan & Braeya while I was gone.

Got this one for my parents. My Dad has declared it doesn't appeal to him and my Mom has decided it's too cute to eat. I should have purchased cereal bowls. LOL. (They did like it, I promise!)

Now THIS is the kind of clock I need in my house! This was in the main area of Chocolate World.

I'm thankful I'm not a Barbie collector, because I would have had to purchase the Hershey Barbie (complete with kiss shaped earrings) - which cost $50. I put that money toward scrapping supplies, thankyouverymuch.

Goodbye, sweet Chocolate World!! Thank you for letting us visit and for making my first vacation so much fun!!!

Amber's fond farewell to Chocolate World.

After we left, we stopped at a scrapbook store in the outlet mall just about a mile away. I'd read online that they had some products specifically for Hershey, so I thought I should load up while I was in the vicinity!

Virtual Vacation: Chocolate Lab

I promised Christina some chocolate, so here goes!

After we spent the morning at the Botanical Gardens (those posts are below), we ate lunch and got majorly lost trying to navigate the town.

We found the Hershey Story museum, which offered a variety of fun things. There are two more posts below about this stop on the trip.

The first thing we did was participate in the Chocolate Lab. Not a dog. An actual lab with actual chocolate.

The first part was kind of like school. We listened to a lady talk to us about the history of cacao and the origin of chocolate. Here I am with a cacao pod. (I think. I was actually far more caught up in the pictures than the listening. Such a bad student.)

After that, we learned about the "nibs" which are inside the pod, and we took turns grinding them with this little granite pestle thing. At this point, I began thanking God for candy bars. This was all a lot of effort for, as the instructor said, "a mediocre chocolate drink." At least she was honest!

Please know how much pride I have swallowed to post the hairnet pictures. NOT my best look. The lady in the background was kind of a Where's Waldo-ette of our trip. We saw her at the gardens...we saw her here...and she was even staying in our hotel! She was nice, but it was funny to keep seeing her everywhere. In this picture I'm grating a piece of chocolate. And part of my glove. But don't tell.

We put the grated chocolate in warm water and did this whisking thing until it dissolved. Then we could add honey, cinnamon, corn meal (!?!) and red pepper flakes (!??!?!??!?) if we wanted to alter the taste and consistency of our drink.

No words. What a dumb picture. LOL.

Amber's empty cup, and her "parting gift" - a chocolate cacao pod.

I'm glad we did the lab - it was not a long activity, but it was fun and different. And I managed to learn just a thing or two...like I look horrible in a hairnet...and chocolate has come a LONG way.

Virtual Vacation: The Hershey Story

The actual "museum" part of the Hershey Story building was upstairs. Julie Crandall, if you're reading this, I have to tell you that I thought of you while we were in the museum. I remembered the conversation we had about all the kids' toys that "do something" - and how kids have lost the ability to be creative on their own. I regret to inform you that I was kind of bored with the plain old standard museum exhibits, and I was totally excited about the interactive stuff. WOOPS!

In addition to the standard memorabilia that one would expect to see in a museum, they also offered these very cool things:

You could design your own candy bar wrapper and then e-mail it to yourself! This was one of my better wrappers (I did five). My Christmas one was pathetic. When you print them out, they are actually large enough to cover a large Hershey bar - so you really can use them if you want!

Amber, being an art major, was much better at designing her wrappers. As I recall, though, this was one of the funnier ones.




Another cool interactive thing we did was the Hershey newspaper. You could select a headline, select a background, enter your name, and then pose for a picture (similar to the little photo booths in a mall) and then it would superimpose you into the picture and write your name into a story. You could email that to yourself too. Ours were hysterical. We decided to be in them together, but the name line wasn't long enough to handle both our names, so we had to become "Bek and Ber." In one of the pictures, we carefully picked out Mr. Hershey riding a camel in Egypt, but with both of us in the picture, we completely covered him up. So there was this whole caption about "Bek and Ber with Mr. Hershey" - but he was missing. We were tired and ridiculously goofy by that time, so we found it pretty funny.

Around the wall of one part of the museum was this timeline. The bottom (orange) part gave facts about world/national events, and the top part gave information about products introduced/changed/retired/whatever in Hershey world. This picture is from our birth years. I was born in the year of Rolos, Reese's Pieces, and Whatchamacalits.

Virtual Vacation: Chocolate Tasting

At this point, we'd not really indulged in chocolate, and it felt wrong. After all, we'd been in Hershey almost 24 hours! Cafe Zooka, which was part of the Hershey Museum complex, offered a chocolate tasting experience (for a nominal fee, of course). All we knew is that we'd be drinking warm chocolate.


Here was the setup of the tasting. We received little glasses filled with chocolate from different places, each with a different percentage of pure cacao. The little boxes gave us information about the location...and also told us the percentage of cacao.

Interesting thing about this - it wasn't like drinking hot chocolate, as I thought it would be. This was thick - like drinking a melted chocolate bar. Amber called it chocolate sludge, and that was a really good description. I had to drink water after every sip. And some of the bitter ones, I couldn't even finish.

Amber with her chocolate sludge.

This ended up serving as our dinner. LOL. After the gardens and before we got lost, we had an enormous lunch at Red Robin. Neither of us were particularly hungry, so we just let this be our dinner - and then we ate some snacks in the hotel later.

Virtual Vacation: Hershey Sights

We left the museum right before it closed for the day, and according to what we'd read in brochures and online, most other things would be closing up shop too, so we decided to call it a day and head back to the hotel. Before we went, though, we snapped a few pictures of the streets of Hershey.

This is the Hershey museum, which is apparently a fairly new or updated version. We nearly never found it, but once we did, we weren't sure how we missed it. Must be the same way we got lost in Indiana. LOL.
Took this picture waiting for a green light. This is just a sign in front of the museum.

Cafe Zooka - where we enjoyed the chocolate tasting. :)

We didn't hit the theme park (I'm not good with rapidly moving rides) but we did see this ride that looked fun. The ring rotated around as it went (slowly) up and down. I think it would have been a fun way to see over Hershey!

And it's true - they really do have kiss shaped street lights. I'd heard you were also supposed to be able to smell chocolate in the streets - but I didn't. I'm not sure if I missed it or if it's not there anymore. I did smell it in the lobby of our hotel, though. Nice touch!

So there's our brief tour-o-town!