August 12, 2014

 

 

We arrived  in Gettysburg PA on the 11th and got settled in at the Gettysburg Farm RV resort. The next day it was raining so Marion and I went to York PA to the Harley Davidson Manufacturing Plant. We went to the tour center called Vehicle Operations Center and took the tour.

 This was the first showroom that had a few bikes you can climb on and the  area behind the bikes shows a brief example of the manufacturing process.

Below is my dream bike. Unfortunately it was on a display. It is the Heritage Classic. Yummy!!!!!!!!! This is the bike, if I ever get one, that I want. A sweet little touring ride. We took the tour which took about an hour. We saw the entire manufacturing process except the final assembly as they were assembling the 2015 models and even the dealers haven't seen them yet, so we were not allowed into that area. Bummer. I wish I had more pics but they wouldn't allow them due to proprietary manufacturing processes that may make the photo. Man this world is paranoid.

August 13, 2014

Today we went to Hershey PA to tour the Hershey factory. The property is a combination of visitor center, Theme park, and manufacturing plant. We visited only the visitor's center. The actual plant was not accessible and I surly did not want to ride a roller coaster. The Visitors center is called Chocolate World. An amazing amount of chocolate housed in this building. Anything from a regular Hershey bar to ones that are a pound or more. Hershey kisses from regular size to a couple of pounds that looked like a small soccer ball.

 Here we got onto these carts that transported you on a tour of a animated chocolate manufacturing experience.

 It was full of animatronic entertainment that I am sure the kids liked a lot.

 I tried to get pics of this process but most did not come out as the carts moved pretty quick and the pics were all blurry. But I did manage to get a few clear ones.

 They had a food court with, you guessed it, mostly a menu that had chocolate in it. There were sandwiches, and a few hot plates that did not feature chocolate but not many. In fact my sandwich was a ham and cheese but the chips were chocolate sprinkle. They were ok but nothing I would rush to the store and buy.

 Here Marion is fulfilling her life long dream. Hitting every gift shop in all 50 states. Not that she buys much, she just loves to look. It is everything against a mans ethos of..... get in, get what you want, and get out.... This is really painful for me. LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!

After leaving Hershey we went to this small town. We were having a argument on how to pronounce the name of this place.. We will leave it to your imagination as to the various pronunciations we came up with. It is a small town known for its quaintness and shops. Again the pain!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This town is known to be the place that the pretzel was born in America, at least for commercial purposes. This was the original bakery where they were all hand made. 

 The young man at the head of the pretzel making line here was instructing us on the history of the pretzel and how to make, roll, and fold the pretzel. Pretzels were first made by Monks.  They would give to students as rewards. The crossing of the pretzel represents crossing your arms across your chest with your hands on your shoulders (as the young man is doing below).  The knot meant eternity....now we know where "tying the knot" when getting married came from!    We thought we were going to roll our own dough and make our own pretzel but at the end of the process he collected the dough and stuck it back in the bucket. Yuk...........that means every tour before us rolled the same nasty doe. Sure glad I cleaned my hands with the smelly alcohols the girls carry in their purse.  Actually, this dough was only flour and water, and they have to do this for sanitary reasons...I don't think anyone would have eaten their pretzel that was rolled out on this wooden board anyway.

 Despite everything we still rolled a pretty good looking soft pretzel even if it was contaminated with who knows what.

 The machine you see in the back is what they went to after they quit rolling them by hand. There were hundreds of these machines lined up and produced thousands of pretzels at a time.  Now they have a new factory with all the current automation required to make the millions of pretzels a day.