It's a Hershey Chocolate World!

I have always loved amusement parks. In fact, when I was a kid growing up in NEPA (that's northeastern Pennsylvania for the un-schooled), there were few things that really signified summer like the nearly annual Hershey Park trip. My brothers and I had a paper route that my mom basically did for us (driving us around with the station wagon tailgate down so we could hop out and toss the papers strategically on porches, flowerbeds and roofs) so that we could earn enough money to go to the place where streets smelled like chocolate and the lampposts were large wrapped and unwrapped chocolate kisses. (Please see below and imagine a young impressionable NB believing it when her evil older brothers told her that those were REAL Hershey's kisses...daydreaming about climbing the pole in the middle of the night and digging my teeth directly into the base of the chocolate lamppost and then falling down fully satisfied with a chocolate face into a cloud of marshmallows...)

When we were too poor to get into the actual park, my family would go to the considerably cheaper (re: free) Hershey Chocolate World, where you get in a little train thing and ride along as they show you how they make the chocolate. I can't do the experience justice here, but just know that there is a nut roaster that actually feels HOT when your traincar goes through it AND big vats of what, to a child, appears to be real chocolate syrup.

ONe of my to-do's before I left the east coast for the west again was to go to Hershey Park. I dragged my roommates and friends with promises of water parks and roller coasters and that reality defying NUT ROASTER...and you know what??? Hershey Park did NOT disappoint us.

In fact, when we discovered that there was a redrobin right next to the park, we dubbed this THE BEST DAY EVER...and it kind of was. Here are a few pictures to prove it.

Bottomless Fries? Never-Ending Roller Coasters? This is a beautiful world we live in.

Just about to go on the tour in our little train bucket thingy....Patti particularly liked the singing cows during the Hershey Chocolate World Exhibit. At the end of the ride, they give you a free hershey bar and then dump you out into a marketing nightmare...millions of hershey paraphernalia and the smell of chocolate being pumped in through the air ducts to lull you into a buying frenzy. As a kid, this part was torture because you always wanted to buy the Worlds! Largest! Hershey! Kiss! but your mom (my mom) was smartly ushering you (me) through the gift shop with pursed lips and a hell no! look on her face.At the park, we discovered Sharyn's gift for ride hopping...She would get off the ride and then skulk around on the other side watching for empty seats at which point she would just jump right back on. Three or four rides in a row later, she'd come bounding out of the exit more excited than a 3 year old who got an M&M for potty training success.
Me and the girls.

There's another surprise picture that I have scan in...so watch for it soon.