<– Day 18 – Tues. May 21st: Food and Jeep Rides | Trip Overview | Day 20 – Thurs. May 23rd: And Then it Started Raining at the Worst Time –>
On Wednesday we spent the day touring Hershey.
It’s not clear to me why the passenger sits so low in the Crosley.
We started out our morning in Hershey, Pennsylvania, by driving to the Antique Automobile Club of America’s museum (aka: AACA). It was Brian who first suggested we visit it. The museum is actually two museums, the AACA’s collection uses the upper two floors and the Museum of Bus Transportation is on the bottom floor.
The outside of the AACA Museum / Museum of Bus Transportation.
The Kissmobile was gone when we left the museum, so I was glad we stopped for a picture before we went inside.
The contrast between the two museums was interesting. The AACA’s exhibits are highly crafted. The volume of vehicles they show isn’t large, but each car is is placed within a context. Even the colors seemed coordinated with the backgrounds. Here are some pics of the AACA.
On other hand, the buses of the Bus Museum on the bottom floor were packed next to one another with little context. I wished we could have boarded a few of them and looked around (though I understand why they don’t let people do that). The wall of the Bus Museum contains a long and detailed look at the history of buses which seemed well done.
1912 White Truck: The oldest running motorcoach in the world. It used flames for headlights and ran on solid rubber tires.
My best Forrest Gump impersonation. This bus was used in the movie.
This bus history runs the entire length of the museum.
The AACA does have a couple jeeps (according to one employee we spoke with), but they aren’t on display. We did find an American Bantam and a Crosely, so we made sure to get some pictures!
After buying a t-shirt and hat, we left the AACA. We hadn’t gone more than half-a-mile when my wife spotted a ‘must-take’ picture. Of course, that meant I had to find a place to double back.
Once we found the ‘must-take’ place, we discovered that one of us had left the camera in the AACA museum. Now, I’m not gonna say it was my fault, but I might have been the one who put it down when I paid for the shirt and hat. Fortunately, when we sheepishly returned to the museum, we found the camera safely in the care of the museum staff. WHEW!
Our second big adventure of the day was the chocolate museum. I use the term chocolate museum even though there is no museum in Hershey by that name. In this case, our poor research led to lots of confusion. I won’t launch into the back tracking, confusion, and frustrated expletives I shared with Siri, but I later had to apologize to my iPhone.
The problem is that a great number of things are named Chocolate or Hershey in the city of Hershey. So, it’s confusing to know when Hershey refers to the town, the company or the man. It turns out there are two chocolate related ‘museums’. One museum, called the Hershey Story, covers the town and it includes a chocolate lab and a chocolate bar (with ‘shots’ of chocolate made from around the world).
The second museum called the Chocolate World used to be in the old Hershey factory and focused on the history of the company and the process of making chocolate. Ann saw this back in the 1970s and said it was cool. We learned (too late) that Chocolate World had been moved to inside the adventure park (with free parking for 3 hours – an attendant at the Hershey adventure park that we talked with steered us wrong). That’s what we *thought* we were seeing when we went to the Hershey Story Museum. Confused yet? Welcome to our world!
Now, here are a few pics form the Hershey Story:
Inside the Hershey Story Museum.
Next, we tried out some chocolate shots from around the world.
Six different chocolates made from cocoa beans from six different countries. Yum!
This was taken inside the chocolate lab.
We got to design our own chocolate bar. My jeep bar was delicious!
I think this falls into the Impressionist style of art ….
After the Hershey Story Museum, we thought some real food was in order. We tried a Vietnamese Restaurant on Chocolate Avenue East of downtown called Miss Saigon. If you like good Pho, I definitely recommend it. Later that night we drove to Ronks, then ate some midnight breakfast at a Waffle House.
Our Wednesday night drive to Ronks, Pennsylvania.
On Thursday we meet with Bill Reiss from Lime Street Carriage in Lancaster. We ought to have a good jeep picture or two from that experience.
<– Day 18 – Tues. May 21st: Food and Jeep Rides | Trip Overview | Day 20 – Thurs. May 23rd: And Then it Started Raining at the Worst Time –>
That first picture of your ride in the green car needs to be your author’s shot on the cover of your next book. That is just too cool.
I’m surprised you were able to sit in the cars and get so close to them…highly unusual for a museum setting.
On your way home will you be going anywhere near the Pioneer auto museum in Murdo SD?? Good example of an underfunded museum for ya. Huge amounts of cars and stuff but all slowly deteriorating. They also have a Kaiser Darrin, and one lonely 2A.
http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g54726-d277934-r73423645-Pioneer_Auto_Museum-Murdo_South_Dakota.html
Passengers sit low to lower centre of gravity. Rally cars use this for navigators. FIA made them put some cushioning/suspension under the nav seat after a rash of back injurues after they started lowering them.
Andrew. I could definitely see the advantage for rally cars.
Bill: If we go that way I’ll check it out. We still haven’t plotted our path back yet (though we will be going through Omaha. That much I know).
Greetings, You guys have been all around my area (Carlisle) and I didn’t know it. We could have gone to breakfast in my 46 2A. What a great trip you both have had.
Thanks, Bill
Bill,
I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance to meet. I think we’ll have to return next year. Maybe we can do a switch through Pennsylvania and then head south. Stay tuned!
– Dave