Friday, September 18, 2009

Let's begin

It's time to start sending out information and getting things ready for the Bliss Family Reunion 2010. The dates are July 23rd, 24th and 25th. These are the official days that we will gather as a group. Friday the 23rd will be an informal dinner gathering and chat time. Saturday the 24th will be fun games and visiting all day and dinner at night. Then we could get together for breakfast on Saturday morning to say goodbyes, if that's where we part. This, again, will be informal and easy.

I know that many of you will be travelling from great distances to get here if you're able to come. You may want to take extra time to see the sights. There are many things to see right here in Hershey. If you are interested in staying longer and doing more activities, there are many places where you can get group rates to visit and I can look into arranging some things for us to do as a larger group. There is also a fun amusement park if that's something you are interested in. There are town tours and a Hershey Museum. Milton Hershey also started a school for underprivilaged children and you can visit the campus and learn about the great things he did there.

If you would like to just go on your own or with your family, I will try to post reviews of attractions in the area so that you could plan your trip with things in which your group is interested.

There have also been suggestions of trying to charter a bus to tour the different states as a group. I've looked a little into this, but it may be something that I would delegate to somebody since it is something that could be set up on the internet or over the phone and can be done from anywhere. I do think it sounds like a fun idea if you've got the time. There are some tours that take off from the rec center here in town. There are day bus tours to New York or Philadelphia and I think even Washington D.C. So I would be happy to check into that. Sometimes there are overnight packages as well. I will be happy to share any information that I gather.

As far as places to stay, I thought it might be easiest to have everybody check out where they could get the best deals. I could try to reserve a chunk of rooms somewhere, but I wouldn't want people to feel obligated to fill those if they were able to find better deals on Hotels.com or one of the many other websites there are. There is certainly no shortage of hotels here since it is a tourist spot. If you choose to stay in Harrisburg, it's only about a 15 minute drive to get to Hershey. Be aware that from 10 - 11, the traffic gets really bad since all the Hershey Park goers are coming in at about that time.

The Hershey Highmeadow campground is really nice and they have shuttles to many of the tourist sites included with the cost of your campsite. The Hotel Hershey and the Hershey Lodge have shuttles as well.

I am really excited for you to come and see this town. It's a small town with big ideas. There are just lots of things to do for a small, family oriented, tourist community. I hope you all consider coming out and checking it out for yourselves.

5 comments:

  1. Heather, it sounds like you are really getting things together. Fabulous ideas!

    My e-mail address is mumtrosper@yahoo.com. I will send your message to all my kids so they can pop in here. Hopefully Marque wouldn't be upset with me suggesting him as a contact person for the Bill Bliss portion of the family. He is pretty in touch with everyone. Lyn might be a good person too. They both are on the internet pretty frequently. I would be more than happy to do it if they would prefer.

    Actually maybe I should do that and you can ask Lyn or Marque to help with the bus tours or something else.

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  2. I wouldn't ask that Marque guy for anything. He can be a real jerk. I would just leave him out of it. Hopefully he doesn't even show up. With our family's luck he probably will. Oh, well.

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  3. I really hate it when I type something up then forget my password or log in information and the have to remember all the wisealeck things I wrote down in the first place. Let this be a warning to you that if you want to comment either save your comments so you can copy and paste them back onto this wee white box or get your sign in information right in the first place. Now I will go see if I can get this to save the info so I can come back and write my original message.

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  4. Of course, it helps to remember ones password so one doesn't have to keep asking for it everytime one logs onto the blogspot.

    Anyway, I will forego the witty or wise acre remarks and say that I will look up the hotels in Hershey and post them. Heather, where will we be partying so I will know what places are closest to the reunion site?

    Marque is really great about organizing cruises and stuff, I think he was a travel agent in a past life, so maybe he could look into the bus tour type stuff. But if they already have something like that already going from that area, we should make use of it.

    Thanks Heather for what you are doing for us.

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  5. Sounds like fun! We're looking forward to it!

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