Lancaster to Hershey

Sunday, October 9th.  We awoke again to a beautiful, sunny day.  Because it was a holiday weekend and Gettysburg was so crowded, we decided to visit Lancaster (Amish country) and Hershey (chocolate country).

A wall mural in Intercourse

There are a group of small towns in the area of Lancaster where Amish folks live.  Two of those are Intercourse, PA and Bird-in-Hand, PA.  Unfortunately, because it was Sunday, many of the Amish owned stores were closed.  But we saw their handiwork in beautiful quilts, weavings and knitting.  We also saw Amish men driving horse-drawn carriages down the roadways.  A very unusual and interesting sight.

We then drove to Hershey, PA.  It's a very nice town and appears to be a modern day 'company town'.  Besides the huge factory, there's a museum, a visitors' center where they explain how chocolate is made and a full fledged amusement park.  And those are all facilities for tourists.  Hershey has also done many improvements for the community in the form of parks, public works and other community facilities.

We were amazed to find that Hershey makes so many varieties of candy beyond the chocolate we grew up with.  The visitor center includes a giant candy store featuring all the different types of candy and in all different sizes.  It was a quite fun and a sweet ending to the day.