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Published: November 25th 2012
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Wednesday, September 26, we said goodbye to the Fair and headed back onto highway 42 south toward the general direction of Hershey, PA. No question, we are now deep into Coal Country. As we were navigating the hills and valleys we climbed up to the top of one hill to find a curious sight. There were streets all laid out with sidewalks like there had been a town there, but there were no houses. Some of the walks had steps leading to houses, but the houses were gone.
At the bottom of the hill about 2 miles further on, we stopped at a restaurant in Ashland and Valerie went in for a mid-morning snack and asked what had happened to the town?? She learned that the town was built on top of a coal mine and the mine had caught fire. The now deserted city had been forced to purchase all the houses and when they did, they torn them down. This was the town of Centralia and the fire is still burning underground. It is more dangerous to try and put it out than to let it burn.
Wandered around on several small roads until we worked our
way to Interstate 81 at about the town of Frackville. We drove as far as the Pennsylvania National Racecourse and Hollywood Casino where we ate at their buffet with a large selection of food at a reasonable price. The casino had been decorated with an old-time Hollywood motif.
We then sat outside and watched the horse racing. This was the usual style racing where the horses and jockeys paraded in front of you so that you could decide on who you wanted to bet on. They then got them in the gate and a few minutes later the horses were off and the race was over. I picked out the horses I liked based on the ones I thought "looked" good. Valerie bet on the horses after studying the race program. She won or placed in many more races than I did, but neither of us won overall. After an enjoyable time at the racetrack, we went inside and Valerie played some slots in the casino part of the facility. We then spent a quiet night in the parking lot.
Thursday, September 27th we left the parking lot with it lightly raining and headed to the town of
Hershey. As we parked Rosie next to another Roadtrek we wondered if we knew the owners. Just then, the woman who owned the other Roadtrek walked up with her sister. She had been in the group that went to Alaska with us. We chatted awhile and we then left to take the factory tour.
You don't really see into the Hershey factory, but take a "tour" on a ride that winds through mock-ups/exhibits with animated cows explaining the chocolate making process. On the way out of town, we ate lunch at a surprisingly inexpensive family restaurant that was very good. We had enough food to take two "doggie" bags back to Rosie with us.
We traveled through the outskirts of Harrisburg until we reached the I-83 freeway and traveled south toward York. There we took off on a county road 116 toward the town of Hanover. This is a very interesting old, old town that has retained its Federal and Victorian architecture around the town square. We were looking for Codorus State Park and had a really hard time finding it as the signage for it was extremely non-existent and there were several one-way streets that seemed to
direct you through town in a direction you didn’t want to go in.
Even when we found the Park, we had a hard time finding the camping area and the directions we got off the maps were confusing. Finally settled into a spot and called it a night.
Video of the factory tour is on my face book page until I can get them on youtube.
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