Hershey and Gettysburg

On the return trip from Pennsylvania, we took a day to swing by a couple of landmark places. One was the Hershey factory in none other than Hershey, PA. The overall place was called Hershey Chocolate World which contained an amusement park, several shops, a few museums, and of course the Hershey factory. Grace had been when she was a kid, but I had never been. We toured the main Hershey factory museum and gift shop. The tour was pretty cool . You were able to ride a mechanized car around on a track and was shown various aspects of how they made the different candies in the actual factory. And at the end of the ride, we were treated with samples of the new Hershey candy called Hershey Bliss. It was really creamy!!! Grace told me that they had changed the tour since she had been and she also said they they had in the past given out free whole original Hershey candy bars. Missed out on that I suppose, but the new bite size candy was great so we decided to by two bags. We also purchased another bag of the bite size candy with different types of nuts. I think all the nuts made me a little nutty!!!

After this, we decided upon lunch at Fuddruckers one of the best gourmet hamburger places in the world. It is a little more pricey than McDonalds, but they generally have good lunch specials. This time the roles were reversed. I had been to Fuddruckers many times in the past, but Grace had never been. We enjoyed our food and hit the road to another popular tourist spot and local PA attraction: Gettysburg.

Well what is there to say about Gettysburg but awesome. The honor, the commitment, and the heroism that was displayed by both those on the North and the South. When we arrived we went to the main visitor's center and purchased a self contained cd audio tour and guide. The we found out that though it was still in the off season there was one older lady who volunteered throughout the year as a park tour guide and speaker. She was set to give a tour and speech in the National Cemetery directly across the street from the visitor's center. So we went to that and enjoyed the history lesson about Lincoln and the location in the cemetery where he gave his famous Gettysburg Address and other matters.

Then we followed the audio tour along the set route listening to the cd as we went. It was highly enjoyable. There were 17 stops to make if you wanted to see everything. They are in order of our self guided tour: McPherson's Ridge, Eternal Light Peace Memorial, Oak Ridge, North Carolina Memorial, Virginia Memorial, Pitzer Woods, Warfield Ridge, Big Round Top and Little Round Top, Devil's Den, The Wheatfield, The Peach Orchard, Trostle Farm, Father Corby, Pennsylvania Memorial, Spangler's Spring, Culp's Hill, and High Water Mark .

I definitely think that the self tour is the way to go personally for several reasons. One is because the cd provides you explanations from a famous historian of the battle field that you may listen to at your leisure and discretion with the option to rewind or fast forward if needed. Another is so that you may look at the various monuments and memorials at your leisure also instead of waiting or speeding up on a timed bus tour with other tourists. We enjoyed it and the only one downfall was that it was late and growing dark prohibiting us from fully seeing the last few monuments. Oh well there is always next time, especially since we bought the tour instead of the t-shirt!