THE SWEETEST PLACE ON EARTH

Being a chocolate lover, it has been a lifetime dream of mine to visit this place. Notice the lamp posts! I had to borrow this picture off a post card, but we were actually right on this cute corner of Cocoa Avenue and Chocolate Avenue! Milton Hershey built this town around his chocolate, but he also built it with lots of love. One can't help but be impressed with the man and all that he accomplished in his lifetime.

I believe that, don't you?

Yes, there was a chocolate store with as much Hershey product as you could want. The tour was free, but they know you are going to shop! Here is Joan making off with her loot.

The town of Hershey is absolutely lovely! Beautiful homes in well cared for neighborhoods. Plus the leaves were fabulous! We spotted this Japanese Maple that was amazing! Yes, it is actually a tree, but obviously untrimmed. I have always had a weakness for Japanese Maples, so I had to take a picture.

On top of all that fun, we found this very nice quilt shop right on Chocolate Avenue. It is located in a house and had a few cars in front of it. When we walked in we were amazed to find it crammed with quilters! Turns out there was a bus tour from New Jersey making the rounds of shops. They were having a ball! The shop owners were lovely and even bought some of my patterns. Naturally we reciprocated and bought some of their fabric. This is why I never come out on top! (Financially I mean. I DO have lots of great fabric!)

As they say in Hershey, Have a Sweet Day!

WELCOME TO MY WORLD

Oh the wonder of it all!

Joan and I actually stayed in Hershey for two nights and visited other places from there. And of course we visited Hershey World! We loved it! And yes, I was like a kid in a candy store! Only with more money! Heh, heh, heh.

Anyone care for a little ice cream to go with all that syrup?

Listen to this: they actually had Hershey bath products! And I have to tell you, as much as I love chocolate, the image of bathing in all that brown stuff doesn't do much for me. Hershey Kisses however--now there is creative genius behind that idea!

LANCASTER COUNTY, PA

Beautiful Lancaster County, with the rolling hills of farmland and forests. We did see Amish buggies traveling on the roads. This photo is exactly like what we saw, but I refused to take photos of them. I got this one on line. Apparently the Amish own most of the farms and farmland in this area, in spite of the fact that they only comprise about 8% of the population. They obviously know what they are doing! I wonder if they have any idea how much they are admired by most of us?

This beautiful stone barn was on the property to the left of Sauder Fabrics. Across the street were fields of standing. dried corn, ready to be chopped up for silage, I imagine.

This is another store from the first group in my previous post in Bird-in-Hand, PA. Joan and I were totally charmed by the whole town.

And here is their display of "edible squash". I imagine it is labeled for the tourists in case they confuse it with the gourds. Let me tell you, their gourds were amazing also!

BIRD-IN-HAND

We left Wednesday morning, October 28th, on a wonderful adventure. My friend Joan has a new car and we had to break it in on a road trip. We have been wanting to do this for such a long time, and we finally made it happen. We drove north with the help of Suzie, Joan's GPS navigator, named after the Susan B. Constant, the ship that sailed to America and into Jamestown. We love our history! Destination: Lancaster County, Gettysburg and Hershey, Pennsylvania.
We drove north from Virginia Beach and gloried in the beautiful fall colors as we got into Pennsylvania. Wow, what a beautiful state! The colors of fall accented everything to perfection.

We arrived in Bird in Hand, Pennsylvania in the afternoon. We wanted to stop at every door on the way into town, but Joan said, "NO". Of course we thought we might have time to go back later to a few shops, but that never happened. This beautiful shop above sold fabric, quilts and gift items.

There is glare on the glass windows, but this one has a great looking quilt displayed. This window was so darling I couldn't stand it! The quilt is wonderful and the accessory items are perfect!

This was the first place we stopped when we arrived in town.

Next door we found lots of pumpkins, gourd, flowers, etc. We both bought bouquets of dried flowers.

My favorite stop in Lancaster County was Sauder Fabrics. It is run by the Amish and it is in the basement of a home out in the country. We were glad for the GPS to find it! Yes, that is me with a bolt of Jo Morton fabric that was so cheap it would make you cry. You had to buy the whole bolt to get the price, so darn it, I HAD to do it! I bought about a dozen half yards that were at least $3 cheaper per yard than what you find in the shops. Now that I am reading the sign I am thinking I should have looked at the spices. I bet they were in bulk, and cheaper also!

I have lots more great pictures, so this is just the first entry for our trip. Please come back for more!