During a trolley tour of the town of Hershey today, we learned that Milton Hershey, the founder of the eponymous chocolate company, did not have children – so no heirs to his vast fortune. Instead, at the turn of the 20th century, he and his wife founded the Milton Hershey School to serve orphaned boys. After his wife died, he seeded the Milton Hershey School Trust with $63 million to ensure the future of the school; today, the trust is worth more than $7 billion and is the controlling owner of the privately held Hershey company. Needless to say, the school is now one of the wealthiest private schools in the world, serving 1,900 underprivileged boys and girls in grades K-12.
Category Archives: Pennsylvania (Older Posts)
Can We Have Dessert?
Seriously? We are in America’s chocolate capital, and we’ve been eating dessert since this morning. At a place where they serve chocolate butter, chocolate chip pancakes (duh), chocolate muffins and hot chocolate for breakfast. Indeed, we are in a place where they hand out free chocolate at almost every corner.
1260 Calories
That’s the number of calories in the six (yes, count ’em) full-size Hershey Bars we received when we checked in at Hershey Lodge about 40 minutes ago. Four because we are a family of four, plus two more attached to a cute birthday card addressed to Sophie and signed by 10 employees of the hotel.
When the front desk receptionist told us that she was going to give us a little welcome chocolate, I expected a Hershey’s Kiss or maybe a mini-package of Kisses. Clearly, they are not particularly concerned with the climbing obesity rates in the U.S. Welcome to the Chocolate Capital of America.
Hershey Park, Here We Come
We leave tomorrow evening for a weekend getaway in Hershey, PA. We convinced Sophie to forego a birthday party and instead celebrate her 6th candle with her loving Mommy, Papa and sister in America’s chocolate capital.
Man Made Snow!
Chloe and Sophie climbing the hill after a snow tube run. It was super freezing outside during our weekend away – temperatures in the single digits. The lake was frozen but there was no snow. What you see is the machine-made stuff. But we didn’t care. The snow tube run worked just fine. By the way, how cute is Sophie in her puffy snow clothes?
Our Super Winter Weekend
Ice skating on the bumper boat pond. Boy, were those skates painful!
Fun in Philly!
We’re back from our long weekend in Philly, and boy, did we have fun.
Some highlights:
(1) Who’d have ever thought that the first hippo any of us would ever see up close and personal would be in Camden, NJ? Thanks Adventure Aquarium for a super fun-filled day!
The City of Brotherly Love
We’re off to Philly tomorrow morning for a long weekend. First stop, the Adventure Aquarium, which is not in Philly. It’s in Camden. But it’s close – just across the Delaware. People tell me it’s quite fun there. We’ll see – but I figure we can’t possibly go wrong with Nile hippos, sharks, penguins, a giant octopus…
MagiQuest Mania
OK – before arriving at this hotel, I sincerely thought that the water park would drive me mad. In practice, however, this was not to be the case. The water park is actually a lot more fun than I anticipated.
Great Wolf Adventure
We made it to the hotel just before lunch and miracle of miracles, our room was ready for us (based on what I had been told, we were expecting to wait until 5pm or so to gain access). The mini-getaway got off to a great start.