Factory Tours

After Coopers Rock, we headed to the Hanover/York, PA area.  Factory tours galore!  When we were in Scranton last December, I went a little crazy buying Herr's salt & vinegar chips.  They're my favorite chips in the whole world and you can only get them in certain areas of the country.  K noticed that you can take a factory tour, and that's when this part of the trip began taking shape.  When I looked into camping in or around Hanover (which is NOT where Herr's is located, but I had it in my mind it was), I learned that there are a bunch of tours in the area to take.  Yippee!!!!  Since I have family on the east coast, and even some in PA, I asked around to see if anyone wanted to join us.  Since my mom decided to come out, a couple of her sisters decided to also come out, so we've got a mini family reunion going on!  

We arrived several days before the others were due in, so we took some of the further out tours or tours that people weren't interested in checking out.  In Lititz there's Julius Sturgis pretzels.  The tour was VERY popular, with a tour bus arriving just as we got there.  We bought tickets for later, thinking that the tour group would have moved on by then, but we still ended up in a too-large group.  The guide was only so-so, but the sample of little ones at the end was SO good.  Very light and airy pretzels, I've not had hard pretzels quite like them.  Yummy!              

We also went to a Dutch market to check out their jams and jellies.  Turned out to be the rhubarb festival weekend!  It was a very commercial enterprise that's meant to lure in the tourists, but we had a good time anyway.  Walked away with apple butter, strawberry/balsamic jam, hot pickles, and a strawberry rhubarb pie.  We also enjoyed the art gallery they had there, and the gentleman working there was kind enough to explain in a lot of detail to the kids what made some of the art really different.  

Our final stop of the day was at a miniature horse farm.  It's an Amish family's farm, but they have a little store and encourage people to stop by and check out their miniature horses.  It was pretty cool, but there happened to be a tour bus at this stop, too, so it was only cool for a few minutes, then we were overrun by groups of people pushing their way to the horses.  First tour day, fun and done!