Late morning found us in the quintessential town of Hershey PA, with streets lined with chocolate kiss streetlights and beautiful buildings. Our destination was the Hershey Story museum.
I am so fond of museums that showcase the building as part of the exhibits, and let you take photos of it.
The Hershey Story walks you through the life of Milton S. Hershey, from his failed attempts to run candy businesses in PA and NY, to his success with caramel, and then his explosive success with chocolate.
Before exploring upstairs, we signed up for a class in the Chocolate Lab.
Here, you learn about the origins of chocolate, and the differences between chocolate in each region (see map behind us that shows the very few places in the world that can grow the cacao tree). Then, we got to taste-test chocolate chips from different parts of the world and guess where they were from. That part was ridiculously formal - talking about flavor notes and uninviting our teeth to the tasting party. Ha! Still funny.
Then, it was time to make our own chocolate bars! We started with milk chocolate and could add cacao nibs, red pepper flakes or cinnamon to enhance the flavor.
After our bars set up, we set off with our Chef Hoschmef to learn more about Milton and chocolate.
Mr. Hershey encouraged his employees to take ownership in their work and find better ways to do it. Two brothers came up with this contraption for wrapping Hershey kisses.
They came up with this machine to make their chocolate even smoother
And, they discovered that bathtubs on wheels were the best means to transport the liquid chocolate around the factory!
We got to try our hand at organizing an assembly line for making, boxing, and distributing kisses. Sadly, it took us multiple tries to figure out how all the available pieces worked, but we (mostly Susan) got it!
We found the ice cream/shortening scoop we used growing up, encased behind glass in a museum
I thought I found a typo, but nope! This Desert Bar was created for soldiers fighting in the desert.
It doesn't melt!
Perhaps my favorite place in the Hershey Story was this interactive map of the city of Hershey. At a station on each side, you can move a cursor across the map, select a building and drop it into your chute. It pops up information on the building and lets you walk through it! You can project your little screen up on the big screen on the wall and take a tour of all the significant buildings in town. Awesome.
Chef Hoschmef spent time at the create-your-own-wrapper stations and this news station.
He made the paper! :)
When we'd seen all there was to see, we moved out to the street to...uh....get raised eyebrows from the passersby. I guess it's not normal to lie around on the sidewalk? ;)
But how else do you get the right perspective for fun, chocolate kiss photos?
This day wasn't over yet! We enjoyed our custom-made Chocolate Lab bars on the way back to Bether's place where more adventure waited...
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