Hershey, PA

I think most people visit Hershey for the chocolate. There are tours and samples and rides and parks, etc. Milton Hershey was quite the philanthropist. Here’s some of what Wikipedia says…

Since Hershey and his wife could not have children, they decided to help others, establishing the Hershey Industrial School with a Deed of Trust in 1909.^[7]

In 1918, Hershey transferred the majority of his assets, including control of the company, to the Milton Hershey School Trust fund, to benefit the Industrial School. The trust fund has a majority of voting shares in the Hershey Company, allowing it to keep control of the company. In 1951, the school was renamed the Milton Hershey School. The Milton Hershey School Trust also has 100% control of Hershey Entertainment and Resorts Company, which owns the Hotel Hersheyand Hersheypark, among other properties. He took great pride in the growth of the school, the town, and his business. He placed the quality of his product and the well-being of his workers ahead of profits.^[8]

Here’s another fun fact: In 1912, the Hersheys were booked to travel on the ill-fated maiden voyage of the British luxury liner RMS Titanic. They canceled their reservations at the last minute due to business matters requiring Hershey’s attention. The cancellation is often incorrectly attributed to Kitty Hershey falling ill, but by this time, she had been ill for several years.^[14] Instead, they booked passage to New York on the German luxury liner SS Amerika. The former Hershey Museum displayed a copy of the check Milton Hershey wrote to the White Star Line as a deposit for a first-class stateroom on the Titanic.^[15] This copy is now located in the archives of the Hershey Story Museum, which replaced the original Hershey Museum in 2009.^[16]

But, besides all that Hershey stuff, there was the nations LARGEST RV show going on and this well advertised event:

Just to be clear…we missed every bit of these things. Our purpose for being in Hershey, PA was to see our dear friends Ron and Ann Olson that we hadn’t seen since they left the Tampa area 4 years ago. Anns health had been declining, we were heading North, Ann had a birthday coming up and there was ZERO chance I was going to miss an opportunity to see her. So we planned a week nearby their beautiful residence and stayed ”on call” for any potential visit(s).
I will admit we had a few challenges.

We arrived on a beautiful Sunday afternoon and backed yolo into a wooded site with an amazing Pennsylvania view. We hadn’t a care in the world…walked the grounds with Mollie and headed to bed early. Upon waking up Monday morning we discovered our puppers and our bed was covered in deer ticks. We spent Monday and Tuesday laundering everything we owned, removing ticks, and bathing the pup. Wednesday, she was groomed and cut and the tick chapter was over. Even with all that going on, we were able to share a lunch date with Ron and Ann. That made everything better!

Then came a torrential rain…inside our bedroom window. I had “repaired” that window a few times…obviously incorrectly, and now it was pouring in the window. It was a dark and wet night. The next day I was determined to fix the window again. I called everyone I knew with an opinion and prepared myself to repair it. Then, I dropped the window and shattered it. OOOPS.

Imagine the wife’s face as she returned from a walk and sees the entire backside of our RV open to the elements without any way to fix it. Woohoo!

I will spare you with the details but the bottomline is this: I removed the frame of the window both inside and out. I removed all the glass and wet nasty caulking. I then found a glass company that said if I would bring the frame to the shop, they would cut the correct glass and reset it into the frame. I would just have to install it. That’s what I did.

We had a great visit from our friends Gary and Marylou. Gary, always about protection and safety, gifted me with my first ever switchblade. That will go nicely with my Kevin gift of a mini baseball bat. They also brought some NJ corn with them and some great laughs around the picnic table.

The area was lined with corn fields and silos and dairy farms and beef farms and so much agriculture and farming all around us. Kimberly and I learned a lot about agriculture because Ron is a walking agriculture encyclopedia. We learned all sorts of new vocabulary words right here in the middle of Amish country. We even tasted a shoofly pie from an Amish bakery that only sells them on Friday and Saturdays.

Besides some fun campground activities, we spent the rest of our time in Hershey spending as much quality time with the Olsons as they could possibly stand. We love them dearly and will never forget our time in the beautiful state of Pennsylvania they now call home. A special thanks to their Daughter and Son in-law, Shaun and Bennie, for hosting an amazing birthday party in their beautiful home. Enjoy the pictures!