I rarely go to the supermarket without having a Hershey with almonds while I shop. It caused some consternation among the employees at first, I am sure they thought I was stealing the candy, but when they got used to it and realized that I kept the wrapper to present to the checkout lady when I paid for my groceries, I became, if not the darling, at least a curio, for the clerks. A hundred mile detour is no big deal, particularly if you are in no hurry, but Hershey is off the beaten path, and while part of the trip was on super highways, part of it was also on two laners, so it took a little more time than we had expected. I had assumed that once in the general vicinity, we could simply open the car windows and follow the scent. Well, perhaps they weren't making candy that afternoon, because if we had relied on that, we would still be on the back roads of central Pennsylvania, searching for the street lights shaped like kisses.
Truth is, there was no aroma.
None at all, and that should have been the first hint that it would be something less than a delightful adventure. There were tour busses everywhere, a huge parking lot, and I found my excitement growing. With this many people, there must be a lot to see, I reasoned. So we parked and walked to the welcome center, which is a huge, airy structure, with what seemed to be a hundred places to buy various varieties of Hershey Chocolates and related products. I thought for a minute about the candy-making process, and decided that it would not be all that fascinating to see vats of chocolate being stirred by mechanical arms.