Thursday was another off day. Cool and raining off and on, we took the short trip back to Medford to visit Harry and David, the gourmet gift-by-mail operation that started here in 1936. Originally shipping pears from their own orchards, they have now grown to making chocolate treats, cookies and pies, all assembled into seasonal gift baskets, and shipped around the world. They have stores nationwide, but all mail orders are shipped from here. This is the local store. We took the tour which involved getting on a bus to go to the 52 acre 'campus' where everything behind the scenes happens. They employ 2000 employees all the time, and increase to over 3000 at the Christmas season.There are 600 phone stations (not manned all the time) to handle phone orders, and about 100 in their IT department. Below are pictures of the vast assembly floor, not the busy season. (notice how clean everything is) This is equipment to grade and sort pears. The pear orchard in bloom. The next pictures are of the machines that make 'Moose Munch', a caramel coated popcorn. The ingredients are dumped into the 'basket', then stirred with heat, then dumped for further processing. Notice the big chucks of butter going in. Below is the popcorn machine. Kernels are fed in on the left, popped corn is coming out in the basket to the left. The corn is dumped into little buckets on a conveyor to take them up to the hopper which feeds the Moose Munch mixer. We saw them making pies and cookies, but we got a real close-up of truffles being made. Spreading the chocolate centers. The line moves under the chocolate coating area, then a cherry drizzle is added. Yumm. As it turns out, the pear is the state fruit of Oregon. (who knew?) We spotted this prime example of a pear tree on the way back to our campground. We hope you enjoyed this little side trip. Tomorrow we head back to the coast. We're looking for warm weather, but I don't think we will find it soon. It's in the 40's at night and 50-60's in the day. And we packed for warm weather!
Stay tuned.
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Who Are We?
Chuck and Mary Lou have been traveling in their RV since 2002 and have lately been taking longer, extended trips. This is our way to share our experiences. Trip Reports
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