Amish Country and Hershey Chocolate World

We got a late start and left the camper at about 10:30 am. The plan was to go to breakfast at an Amish smorgasbord restaurant. (That’s another name for a buffet.) Sadly, with our late start the breakfast smorgasbord was over. But the girls and I were able to order off of the breakfast menu and the boys wanted the lunch smorgasbord.

After brunch, we went to Amish Village for a tour of an Amish homestead.

The Amish don’t use closets, they hang all their clothes on wall hooks.
Wood stove.
Showing us the different clothing. The women’s dresses have stick pins in them for ease of letting out and in for pregnancy or weight changes.
They always wear black shoes but sometimes they are Nike’s (second from left). There are Amish shoe stores in the area that carry only black shoes.

Our guide told us that she sometimes works for the Amish, giving rides and such. She told us a lot of information about the Amish as she gave her tour of the Amish house. To get around that pesky no electricity rule they sometimes use a…

…compressed air mixer…
…propane range and oven…
…gasoline powered iron…

After the house tour, you could tour the grounds on your own. There were farm animals to feed which was the highlight of the kids day. They also had some buggies, farm equipment, and a little playground.

This lovely creature would just sit there with its mouth open and you could drop the food in.

From there we went to a flea market. The kids wanted everything in sight but I managed to reign them in. We did leave with a few toys including some LOL surprise balls that the girls had to have, that turned out to be counterfeit and not quite right. The girls were upset at first but I suggested they could work-in an interesting storyline for them with the rest of their dolls. The kids all wanted these John Lennon glasses and we got a deal on 4 pair of them.

It was over 85 degrees out and it was brutally hot at the flea market. We bought some whoopie pies from an Amish stand to try tonight and left for Hershey World.

Hershey has a big theme park too but we were there mostly for the tour. The tour itself is free and is more of a Disney-esque ride than a tour (no actual chocolate making is seen on it).

After that we decided to splurge and do a few of the paid activities. We saw a live performance which included chocolate samples that they guide you through tasting, and a 4-D theater animation where the animation interacts with the audience similar to Turtle Talk at Disney.

Last we had a create your own candy bar activity. The kids really enjoyed this! You use computers to choose what to put in and on your chocolate bar then design the wrapper. Then you watch the assembly line make and wrap your candy.

By the time we left I had a splitting headache. I swear this happens every time I go to a chocolate factory! I drank a bunch of water and took ibuprofen and felt much better by the time we got back to the campground. It was about 7pm so I made an easy dinner. The girls played on the playground with some other campground kids and caught fireflies.

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