August 29, 2011

August 29, 2011

Today is our wedding anniversary. I asked Aimee what she wanted and she said "to go home". We don’t have enough gas for that. How about something closer. I found just the right gift. A tour of the Jelly Belly factory! We went there this morning and Aimee was like a kid in a candy store. Well, I guess it is a candy store. Jelly Belly, probably made famous by Ronald Reagan, is a master of marketing. Who else could have turned jellybeans into big business? Jelly Belly fame is from the wild flavors they sell. We tasted a few before going on the tour. Second most popular flavor is buttered popcorn. Who would have thought!

The tour follows a catwalk above the frenetic factory floor. The main process occurs in what looks like a giant rock tumbler. Here the hard coating is sprayed onto the soft gooey centers. What I found most interesting is the constant movement of beans. It seems the workers are either loading the beans into boxes or emptying them out of these same boxes. As an engineer, it seemed terribly inefficient. But I guess that chaos is the result of the huge number of flavors they have to make, store, and then mix before final packaging.

Just around the corner from Jelly Belly we had the choice of touring an olive oil factory or a brewery. We chose Budweiser. We thought a couple beers would go better with lunch than olive oil. I have taken Aimee to many places she considers off-the-wall in the middle of nowhere. But she is always shocked to see a crowd wherever I take her. So who would have imagined that we would be the sole tourists at a Busch brewery. We got our own private tour. At the tasting room we had Stella Artois and Beck’s, two additions that came with the merger with the European Inbev.

From the Bay area we drove north thru farm country passing mostly nut and olive tree orchards. After three hours we left the farms and started into the mountains. Just ahead is Mt. Shasta’s snow-capped peak. Outside Redding, CA we stop for the night at Whiskeytown National Recreation Area. Despite being a National Park unit, our campsite is a parking lot again!