Sunday, August 01, 2010

Hershey PA, Chocolatetown USA

We drive down to Hershey PA weekend before last.  Helen had an interview at the teaching hospital there:

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A small town of 12,000, about 15 miles from 3 mile island nuclear power plant in Harrisburg.   Formed when M Hershey sold his caramel company in 1903 and built the worlds largest milk chocolate factory in the middle of dairy cow country, where there was lots of milk:

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He did well, giving away his fortune to support a school for the needy and built an an amusement park for his employees, now a big ride park for anyone:   

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I didn’t do those rides, I took a tamer, free ride, hosted by singing cows, that explained how chocolate was made:

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I’m always amazed at how old stuff is here in the East (I’m scared to visit Europe).   This is a shell that Mr. Hershey built over a schoolhouse built in 1732, the year George Washington was born:

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After Hershey we drove to Philly to visit our physics professor friends.   This is Helen and Helen (in Russian, they kept it simple and name all women Helen):

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And this is Alex (yep, all Russian men are named Alex), in his Jesus mode, waiting for the grapes in their new grape vines to ripen:

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On they way home, I hit notice a small bump in the highway and started wondering when we should replace our tires.   About a minute later, I got my answer:

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So we are mostly done with travel for the summer.  One more trip back to the lake in a couple of weeks:

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This time we will stay for a couple of weeks and bond with the loons.   One of the lake people shared this photo of this years 2 loon babies on a swim with their parents:

IP Loon Chicks July 25th 212 Wide