Carousels, Colorful Falls, and Chocolate

We spent some time at the Herschell Carousel Factory.  What a fun place!  We saw how the horses and other animals are carved, how the music organs are made, and how the carousels are put together and shipped to various places across the US.  Then we went for a ride on a carousel.  It was fun!

From there we went to Niagara Falls.  What a spectacular place!  The falls are beyond words to describe them.  We went on the Maid of the Mist boat tour to feel the falls up close in the churning waters and mist, then walked up to the American Falls to the Hurricane Deck to feel the power of the falls.  We were pretty wet after that, even with the special rain ponchos they gave us!  We also took the trolley ride around the park to see all of the park.  We stayed until dark to see the lighting of the American falls with colored lights, and later fireworks. We had a great visit.

the American Falls, and Bridal Veil Falls

A misty view of the Horseshoe Falls

Rebekah on the Hurricane Deck

Red lights on the American Falls

Our next stop was the Zippo/Case Museum.  This museum was all about the famous Zippo lighters, how they are made, and the various styles over the years.  They also had Case knives of all sizes and kinds.  It was fascinating.

A US flag made from Zippo lighters

We stopped and had a spiedie (pronounced speedee) for lunch.  These are chunks of meat that are marinated and grilled on a spit, then served on a slice of Italian bread. We tried all three kinds, chicken, pork and city chicken.  Our favorite was the city chicken, which is breaded and fried pork.

We spent the afternoon at Hershey's Chocolate World in Pennsylvania.  We enjoyed the fun of the "factory tour" which is more like a Disney ride but they give you chocolate and it's free so we rode it a couple of times!  We also went on the trolley around the town of Hershey which told us the story of Milton Hershey and the history of the company and gave us different samples of chocolate candies that they make.  It's true that the street lights are Hershey's kisses, both plain, and wrapped!  We made our own candy bars, king size, and designed the label, which was fun, and even went to a taste testing where they gave us samples of all different kinds of chocolate, and another bar of chocolate at the end.  We finished up the day at the gift shop where we bought some more chocolate, and a delicious cupcake from the bake shop!

our own designed candy bars in the making

We really liked the next stop.  It was Roadside America.  Here they had miniature towns all put together into a huge display with working model railroads, trolleys, people and animals. They had churches that played music and chimes, bridges of all kinds, many different kinds of houses, shops, and farms.  The display was really great.  At one point, they stopped and dimmed the lights for night time.  It was really impressive.

We finished the day with some Shoo fly pie.  It was delicious warm with whipped cream.