Local Sports: The Reading Royals

On March 19 (long before we went to see the Reading Phillies play), Billie took me to a Reading Royals hockey game for my birthday. This post also marks the end of our current backlog, which means that we can start posting about more recent events (until, of course, we get behind again!).

The Reading Royals logo - they have been playing in Reading for 10 years.

Billie always makes fun of how low hockey scores typically are. She picked the right night to go to a game!

The game had a lot of penalties that led to a lot of goals. At one point, things got pretty heated between the teams, with players and coaches yelling at each other and at the officials. A player for the visiting team nearly got into a fight with one of the referees. That player and another were ejected over the course of the game.

Between periods, they let a ton of kids out onto the ice. With that many players, scoring a goal would be nearly impossible. The fact that some of the kids could barely skate didn't help much, either.

The team's mascot, Slapshot, also made an appearance between periods, when he drove out onto the ice in this little truck before throwing t-shirts to people (sadly, not us).

The final score was 9-2. We had a good time despite Billie's claimed dislike of hockey, though I'm not sure how a 1-0 game would have gone over.

Hershey, PA

Jessica and Alexis's visit to Reading gave us a chance to go to Hershey, PA, which is advertised as "The Sweetest Place on Earth." After selling his successful Lancaster Caramel Company in 1900 for $1 million, Milton S. Hershey turned his focus to the production of milk chocolate, which was a Swiss luxury product at the time. To do so he returned to his hometown of Derry Church, PA where he would be able to obtain large quantities of fresh milk and started a factory. Along with the factory, he also worked hard to establish a factory town for his employees that would provide them with a sense of community.

Formerly a location of the Milton S. Hershey School, the Hotel Hershey currently overlooks the factory and amusement park area.

This is the entrance to Chocolate World, where we spent most of our time.

Some of these people really like Reese's Peanut Butter Cups (Reese originally worked for Hershey before leaving to start his own company that used Hershey chocolate. After his death, his company was sold to Hershey.)

After spending some time in Chocolate world and going on the tour where we saw the singing cows, we took a "trolley" ride around town where we learned some of the history behind the factory, the city, and the school.

They did a good job of making the inside of the bus look like an actual trolley.

Alexis and Jessica on the trolley.

Brent and Billie on the trolley.

This is a building downtown. Note the design of the street lights.

This home was built by Milton S. Hershey's great grandparents and is where he was born on September 13, 1857. After being sold and repurchased by Hershey, this was the first location of the Hershey school.

After our trolley tour we returned to Chocolate world to make some candy. Unfortunately, facial hair had to be covered up, too.

Jessica and Alexis after preparing to make candy.

Everybody picked a base (dark chocolate, milk chocolate, or white chocolate) that moved along this conveyor belt. As it went, the fillings that you had selected were dumped in.

After the fillings had been added it was coated with milk chocolate.

Billie, Jessica, and Alexis look for their candy bars in the cooling tunnel. Watching chocolate cool was not as exciting as they make it appear.

While things were cooling everybody got to design their packaging. Here, Jessica oversees Alexis's design.

After cooling, the candy bars were boxed and then put into tins with our designs on the outside.

Possibly the highlight of the day for some of these people - a real, live Reese's Peanut Butter Cup! (You'll remember that they were excited to get their pictures taken next to a picture of one earlier in the day.)

After leaving Chocolate World, we went to the botanical gardens, which were free because spring had not quite sprung.

This is the view of the amusement park and factory from the gardens.

Alexis with some Hershey Kiss fountains. She's probably glad that they weren't spraying water.

A butterfly with some flowers starting to grow on its wings.

We had a good time in Hershey but the various tours, chocolate tastings, and candy makings could be expensive. Regarding the Hershey School, it started as a school for orphaned boys but is currently coeducational and enrolls about 1800 students from low-income families all over the country. Starting in 1905 Hershey created a trust to provide the town's financial services and manage the funds for his philanthropic efforts. The $60 million in Hershey company stock that he gave to the school in addition to 486 acres of land is currently worth more than $7 billion.

Jessica and Alexis Visit Reading

Although we moved from Indiana to Pennsylvania, as Emily and Kerri and Shannon have demonstrated, the increased distance from friends and family hasn't entirely stopped us from having visitors. Our proximity to Philadelphia and other historic sites also means that there might be more to do when people come to Reading. At the end of March, my sister Jessica took advantage of her daughter Alexis's spring break and came for a visit. Billie and I were working while they were here but we still managed to fit in some activities (and some games like Boggle and Clue).

Today we'll look at some pictures of their visits to Reading landmarks before taking a look at our trip to Hershey on Tuesday.

Our first stop was the Pagoda on Mt. Penn. Alexis was disappointed that Mt. Penn did not have snow on top of it and rejected its status as a mountain.

Here is a closer view of Jessica and Alexis with the Pagoda sign. Alexis did not reject the labeling of the Pagoda.

Jessica and Alexis on the walkway around the Pagoda with the city of Reading behind them.

After the Pagoda we moved on to the Albright campus, where Jessica was the first to pose as Jacob Albright (as Kerri and Shannon would later get to experience).

At Christmas, Jessica had boldly claimed that she could tell the difference between Pepsi from different containers. We took the opportunity to test her claims when she visited.

The result was total failure on Jessica's part. She did not match a single sample to its container. The correct answers were: 1=can, 2=2 liter, and 3=20 oz, but Jessica guessed 1=20 oz, 2=can, and 3=2 liter.

Unfortunately, we don't have any pictures of playing Boggle or Clue or watching Tangled, but we do have some pictures of our trip to Hershey that you can see in a few days.

Around Reading: The Daniel Boone Homestead

As noted yesterday, our first stop with Kerri and Shannon on the Saturday morning of Memorial weekend was the Daniel Boone Homestead. Although it is only about five miles from our house and we've driven past it numerous times, Billie and I had never been there. Daniel Boone was born and grew up on this land from 1734 until 1750, when he moved to North Carolina and eventually Kentucky (Kerri actually lives in Boone County, KY!). Our guide told us that young Daniel would go out into the woods for weeks at a time to hunt, which is quite a bit different from the activities of kids today. Here are some pictures from our visit:

The right end of this house is where Daniel Boone was born and lived. The rest was added by later owners.

Here we are standing outside of the house. The door behind us is directly opposite the door on the front porch. Both doors lead into the kitchen. To our left is the entrance to the cellar under the newer section of the house. Also with us is our guide, who volunteered here for years before being hired. He was incredibly patient with the thousands of questions Shannon asked.

Under the original house is a spring cellar, which has slowly flowing water from an underground spring all year around. This served as a natural refrigerator during Daniel Boone's time and is still used today when reenactments take place on the property.

This is the main living room of the house. The furniture that wasn't being used was pushed up against the walls until it was needed.

This is the hearth in the kitchen where cooking was done. Hopefully the doors on both ends of the room provided a breeze when cooking during the summer!

There was also a dining room and bedroom on the main floor. In this picture Billie and Shannon are climbing the stairs to the second floor. They straighten out after going around this tight curve but I wonder how many people injured themselves on stairs like these.

This is the view from the back of the house.

These are some other buildings that were on the property. Kerri and Shannon tried unsuccessfully to break into the house on the left.

Having visited the Daniel Boone Homestead, we headed off to the Pagoda and Albright, which we showed you yesterday. Our day didn't end there, though. On Wednesday, we'll have some pictures from our afternoon in Intercourse, PA.

Memorial Weekend: Kerri and Shannon in Reading

Kerri and Shannon, two of my friends from CMU, came for a visit over Memorial Weekend (Kerri, by the way, posted about their visit on May 31st - the day they left). After some delayed flights Friday night the rest of the visit went smoothly. In addition to the typical tour of Reading and Albright, their visit gave us an excuse to do some other things in the area that we hadn't gotten around to yet. We'll post about the other things later but, for now, here are some pictures from their tour of Reading:

Shannon, Kerri, and Billie in front of the pagoda.

Kerri and Shannon with Reading behind them.

Shannon, a lion, and Brent on the Albright campus.

Shannon posing as Jacob Albright (Jessica was the first to do this but since she visited at the end of March and I'm posting about things in reverse chronological order it will be a while before we get to her visit).

Kerri stepped into Jacob Albright's shoes as well.

Albright was actually our second stop on Saturday. Tomorrow we'll have more about our first stop at the Daniel Boone Homestead.

Local Sports: The Reading Phillies

One of the perks of living in a more populated area is the presence of minor league sports teams. Last summer we intended to go to a Reading Phillies (or R-Phils, the minor-league affiliate of the Philadelphia Phillies) game but by the time we were able to focus on anything other than getting the house ready to live in it was too hot for us to want to spend an evening outside in the sun. This year, when Billie was able to get free tickets to a game on June 8th we took advantage of the opportunity. Below are some pictures, many of which center on the stranger things we saw. Of course, since neither of us watch baseball, these things could be commonplace.

This was the view from our seats. Believe it or not, I took this picture so that is not the back of my head.

Maybe we would have been more willing to go to a game in last year's July heat if we had known that some of the seats have access to a pool where you can watch the game.

This man ran around in this ostrich rider costume and threw hot dogs to people. That's logical.

Here is another view of the ostrich-riding hot dog vendor on the score board
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Later in the game, the tooth fairy and her young assistant came out to clean the bases with their giant toothbrushes. I guess you can't blame somebody for picking up an extra job these days.

This train shot t-shirts out of a cannon. Thankfully, it was not restricted to train tracks. Otherwise its cannon would not be of much use in a war.

No game is complete without a fight! We have no idea what caused it.

After an early lead, Reading lost, 7-6. Maybe it was because they were intimidated by the fight. Maybe it was because they were not the better team. Maybe it was because their uniforms are ugly. Whatever the case, we had a good time other than the fly ball that came our way and is best forgotten.