Goodbye Hershey, stockpiling, and the rain

Saturday's have been about family and little outings lately. Spending time together, exploring around us, doing something a bit different.

Today was no different. We took the day off of our normally scheduled activities, I took some cold medication, and off we went to Smith Falls and the Hershey Factory, which closes in December of this year.

The factory does not seem to be producing anything right now, so there was nothing to see on the tour except a vat of chocolate being mixed, but we've seen the tour before. We were there for the chocolate shop, some snacks and for me to stockpile for some baking.


This picture does not do my stash justice. And I certainly didn't arrange it so it would look "pretty". All total, I bought cocoa, milk chocolate chips, semi-sweet chocolate chips, and white chocolate chips. And the a set of nesting cookie cutters, Hershey's Kisses. I could have bought so much more but decided to stick with "the basics."

We took the scenic route back, while rain poured down around us. We explored a little town on our way home, which looked like it was trying to host an outdoor Halloween festival, with little red tents set up on the street corners of down town. At one tent I saw several men bundled, cold and wet, but manning their crock pots for a chili cookoff, as the handmade sign said. Nothing, however, was happening, due to the rain.

On one corner was a group of kids, in their hockey jersey's, part of the event, but also trying to raise some money by selling candy apples. As we drove by, we could see no one was out, no one was stopping, no one was buying. So despite the 4 bags of chocolate and treats in our trunk, we stopped.

Does a blue candy apple taste any different than a red candy apple?