We arrived here after a pretty long drive today. There's really no easy way to get from Boston to this location, you either go back through NYC and pay $3000 worth of tolls, or you take the long way around. We chose the latter, and it took us about 8 hours to get here, including lots of stops. We'll be visiting the area and making a tour of the beautiful Lancaster County, as well as visiting Hershey, PA and the World of Chocolate. We're all looking forward to it.

Wednesday Update:

Today was a "sweet" day! ;-> We headed over about 45 miles to Hershey, PA and visited Chocolate World, which is a little like the World of Coke we saw in Atlanta, only a slightly less costly (and less extravagant) look at the way something is produced. In this case, the production is lots and lots of chocolate, so we were very interested.

We took a quick disney-type ride through an interactive look at the way chocolate gets made, from the cocoa beans to the finished products. Hershey produces lots of different types and brands of candy, not all of them chocolate based (ie: twizzlers, bubble gum, etc.)

After the tour, we took a look around the property, stopping to see part of Hershey Park, and the campus that comprises the Hershey property. We also looked around the town of Hershey, which is a quaint little planned community, originally built to provide a true "home" for workers at the Hershey plant.

We also ventured over to see the Milton Hershey school, which is a philanthropic boarding school, educating more than 1700 kids at this time, on it's way to more than 2100. It's a beautiful campus, and it's inspiring to see how generous the Hershey's were with their riches, doing such a service for these kids.

Tomorrow we'll be looking around the Lancaster County area and taking a closer look at the Amish lifestyle. We're very interested in learning more about this culture.

Thursday Update:

Another relatively low-key day of sightseeing here in Lancaster County. We started out by visiting a local shop featuring Amish items and other touristy stuff. We tasted and bought a shoo-fly pie, an Amish favorite, and yummy. We also picked up a few little trinkets.

The girls went into a neat little doll shop, featuring 5000+ dolls and doll clothes, including some that fit American Girl dolls. They were both bummed to learn that they will miss an AG party that's going on this weekend.

The highlight of the day for me was visiting the Mennonite/Amish information center. This little museum features a life-sized replica of the Tabernacle. This is the dwelling place of God that Abraham and the Israelites created from God's instructions (in Exodus/Leviticus) and took with them as they wandered the desert. The display is pretty cool, and really brought those difficult to understand scriptures to life.

The museum also featured a movie that explained the Amish in a personal way. Although it wasn't as detailed as what I would have hoped, a close up look at their lifestyle was quite interesting, and did answer some questions I had.

After the museum, we went to a pretzel factory. The factory is no longer in operation, but rather, this is a restored original factory that was first used back in the 1850s. It is the first and oldest pretzel factory in the world. We had an opportunity to learn how to make pretzels, and learned lots about the process.

We also picked up our tickets for the Sarah Palin rally that will happen on Saturday. We are excited to get the girls even more exposure into the political process by attending one of these events. We've been watching all of the debates together, and they've been learning about the political process and all of the stuff that's going on in our country right now, so some more hands-on experiences will hopefully add to the knowledge.

We had a good day today, and we're heading into another part of town to see more Amish lifestyle stuff. We'll be taking a buggy ride which takes you into a working farm, and we're looking forward to learning more about the culture.

Friday Update:

Today was a relatively low key day, but we enjoyed seeing more of the area up close and personally. We took an authentic Amish buggy ride this morning, and our driver was one of the 12% of Amish males that leave the faith. His story was interesting. It seems the Amish base their faith on works and the ability to live a good life, with the hope that this will lead to salvation. His story focused more on the Grace of God that we believe in, and thus he felt the Amish lifestyle wasn't in line with what he believed God and Christianity was all about. His story was actually both interesting and sad at the same time. The 30 minute ride took us through some Amish farm areas, and included some great insider commentary about the lifestyle and what they are all about.

We spent some time milling around in the more heavily Amish farming area, as well as some of the local shops, and I feel like we got a great feel for what Lancaster has to offer. We also stopped by a local fruit stand and picked up some local apples. We're confident they will be great, they sure look good.

Tomorrow we'll be attending the Sarah Palin rally here in Lancaster, then heading West towards Pittsburgh. We're likely to stop by Gettysburg on the way, but timing and interest might determine that.

Saturday Update:

This day spans a couple of blog entries, but I'll do the morning events here. We just happened to be in Lancaster on the day that Sarah Palin had a rally in the city. We were able to get some tickets from the GOP headquarters, and we had to get up nice and early to make sure we got there in time to get a seat.

I don't think I've ever seen lines as long as we saw at the event, outside of the turnstiles of Disney. We got there at about 7:45am, 45 minutes before the doors opened, and the line was literally 3 blocks long. By the time the doors actually opened, they were 5-6 blocks long, wrapping all the way around the event area. The security folks did a good job though, and got everyone through quickly.

The event itself featured Tracy Lawrence, a country singer, and a few local republican candidates and politicians. The wait for Mrs. Palin was actually shorter than I had expected, and the timing was pretty good. The speech was typical stuff, rah, rah us, and this is why you shouldn't vote for them, etc. Pretty much what I expected. I was happy to see the vitriol that had been described in the media was absent, and even the protesters out front were pretty calm and collected. It was a good experience for all of us to attend our first political rally, and I'm thankful we had the opportunity to go.

Faith's blog:
Two days ago we were in Hershey, Pennsylvania. We went into Hershey’s Chocolate World. In Hershey’s Chocolate World we went on a ride that showed how chocolate is made, which is what Hershey’s Chocolate World does. Now, yesterday, since there is a lot of Amish in the area, we took a buggy ride by someone with an Amish background. It was fun. I LOVE Pennsylvania!

Kenzie's blog:
This was really fun! We got to go to “The Doll Factory”, a candle shop that sells and hand makes candles, a place that has an actual sized replica of the tabernacle, the first pretzel factory/shop in the U.S.A. (they let us make our own soft pretzel), and my favorite, the buggy ride! We even got to drive! We had two towns we went to aside from here. The first one, Hershey. We got to go to Chocolate World. There we saw how chocolate is made and we got free samples! The other place, Gettysburg. We saw the spot where President Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address. We also saw a cemetery where hundreds of soldiers are buried. Before we left we went and saw Sarah Palin speak! It was cool! I’ll talk to you soon!

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Lancaster, PA

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