Yesterday we started off in Columbia, PA on the banks of the mighty Susquehanna River but instead of going to the watch and clock museum we went to Turkey Hill Experience. Turkey Hill is a company that makes ice cream and iced tea and it was an interactive museum about how ice cream and iced tea are made. I took a quiz about what my personalTEA is and it came back as unsweetened ice tea.
The basic admission to Turkey Hill Experience - the "one scoop" admission - includes access to a surprisingly informative exhibit about the ice cream making process with explainers about homogenization and pasteurization, the good and bad bacteria found in milk, and various interactive activities such as the opportunity to make your own ice cream flavor and then design packaging for it, a video game where you have to shoot the bad milk bacteria but leave the good milk bacteria alive, and a fake cow that you can milk. They also have a live video stream of their actual ice cream factory (located a bit south of Columbia) where, oddly, you can tap on employees to find out their name, job duties, and favorite ice cream.
But we paid the $8 extra per person for the "two scoops" admission which included access to their TasteLab. Here, they give you a pint of plain vanilla ice cream and you can create your own ice cream flavor by adding flavoring chemicals and mixings. I created a strawberry and mint ice cream because those are two plants growing in my garden right now. The TasteLab also gives you a really thorough background on the ice cream making process and a bit of corporate history. I learned how when the Turkey Hill company got rid of artificial dyes a couple of years ago, people complained that the ice cream is no longer the right color (mint flavoring is colorless, so mint ice cream is naturally white and the green tint must be added artificially) so now they offer both natural and artificial versions of major flavors.
After that we drove all the way out to Strasburg. Twice we've gone onthe Strasburg Railroad, a heritage railroad that runs steam trains, but today we instead went to the Pennsylvania Railroad Museum next door which is indoors. They have a lot of old train cars, though I was disappointed by how few were actually open to go inside of. Part of the museum is mocked up as a small PA town from the 19th century and there was a woman doing historical reenactment as a temperance advocate, she actually had the sign in blue911's avatar. My kid and I both signed temperance pledges promising not to drink (I haven't touched alcohol since 2018 so this was easy for me) and she was nice to us, but she gave stern warnings of imminent doom to the majority of visitors who refused to sign the pledge.
We ended the day back in York. We went to downtown York (which is really run down and full of vagrants, though there are interesting businesses in the ruins) and went to an arcade that had a lot of old video games and pinball machines from the 1980's and 1990's. Instead of charging you by the game, they charge you by the hour. You get this device on your wrist that glows green at first, then once you have half an hour left it glows blue, then once you have no time left it turns red. I assume this is a conscious and intentional reference to Logan's Run. It was nice to play some of my favorite 90's arcade games again (they had Primal Rage!) and my kid really loves pinball. Afterwards my wife went to a thrift shop nearby and discovered a large ceramic Betsy Ross who will go out in my garden as an American Semiquincentennial decoration.
