We're on the road again! We left our parking spot at the Alameda Fairgrounds in Pleasanton, and we are heading north towards Santa Rosa, California. We have an exciting stop planned during this moving day, but first it seems fitting to make a few comments about driving a motor home through the state of California. This is the first time in our travels that we have seen that RVers are limited to a slower speed limit. Because we are towing the car behind the motor home, we can only drive 55 mph.
We also found another discrepancy against RVers when we crossed the short toll bridge today. It costs a two-axle vehicle $5 to cross the bridge. So it would cost our car $5, and our motor home $5. But because they are connected, we are considered a 4-axle vehicle. That cost us a $20 toll. It really wasn't a long or a pretty bridge, but for $20 Denisa was determined to take a picture as we drove across.
Denisa is pretty excited about the stop we are making on our way to the next campground. She loves factory tours, and this might be the sweetest. We are heading to Fairfield, California, where they make those yummy jelly belly beans.
As we walked into the front door of the visitor center, we were shocked to see the line for the factory tour looped all the way around the building to the side door. We found that spring break just started for many of the schools in California, and it looks like everyone decided to come to Fairfield for the tour today.
Jelly Belly has plenty of distractions to keep people entertained while waiting in that long line. There are vending machines that test your skills, or find imaginative way to dump out jelly bellies in exchange for your quarters. To the left we see that many people are eating lunch at the grill at the visitor center. Visitors can choose from jelly-bean-shaped burgers and pizzas.
Lunch could be finished up with ice cream or other sweets at the Jelly Belly snack bar. So even though the tour is technically free, we didn't see how anyone could leave here without spending money.
We took turns shopping at the official Jelly Belly store while we waited in line. Okay, the truth is that Mark stood in line while Denisa roamed around and shopped. She was as happy as a kid in a candy store! By the time we waited around an hour in that line, we realized that we were the only adults there without children.
We thought that jelly bellies were just for eating, but we would discover that they have other uses. For example, you could do this with them. Can you tell what this is?
What if we zoomed out a little further. Do you recognize these jelly beans?
That first picture is the right eye of one of the portraits on display at the factory tour. President Ronald Reagan was one of this company's favorite customers. They shipped tons of Jelly Bellies to the White House during his 8-year term. He always had a jar of them on the table for his national meetings. A jar with his presidential seal filled with jelly bellies was his favorite gift to give to visiting dignitaries. We like his style, but we can't agree with his favorite flavor--black licorice.
There were other presidential portraits on display, and the company hires a full-time artist to prepare new jelly belly art projects. By this time we were finally at the front of the line, and we were issued our Jelly Belly hats and saw the orientation film. We were ready to start our walk through the factory, looking down on the action through windows over the factory floor.
We know they put the tour in the order that makes sense for use of space inside the factory. But it was a little confusing to start in packaging, and ten jump around in the manufacturing process. For blog purposes, we'll try to present the process in its correct order. That would start with forming the middle of the jelly bean. It was interesting to see that these centers were actually formed in a bed of corn starch. A machine makes many jelly-bean-shaped impressions in a tray filled with dry corn starch. You see tall stacks of those trays on the left in the picture below. Then another machine fills each one of those impressions with a special recipe jelly. You can see trays of red-filled trays exiting the machine on the right.
A filled tray of jelly bean centers is then sent to the drying room to firm up and rest. The next day, this tray will be dumped, with the corn starch then separated from the gelled jelly bean centers that have now hardened.
We see those centers dumping out at the bottom of the picture. Those will fall into the trays that are stacking up high at the top of the picture.
Many of the processes are automated, including this robot that knows when there are three trays full of centers. It then moves those three to the top of the appropriate stack, and brings more empty trays.
They had large warehouse rooms full of centers that were resting until they were ready for the next step.
The next step will build the shell that encases the chewy center of a jelly belly. The company prides itself on using real fruit in its jelly beans. In this picture we see the cook carefully measuring out the ingredients for another batch of beans. Then these giant dryer-looking drums will be loaded with centers.
That green mixture and more sugar is added to the centers as they roll around inside the giant rotating drums. It's a delicious-smelling place to work! As they whirl, the harder outside shell forms around the chewy center.
After all those jelly beans are coated and thoroughly dizzy, they will go into trays to dry and rest again. This is hard work, and jelly bellies obviously need a lot of time to rest. It takes over a week to complete a batch of beans, mostly because of the sitting time between steps. At this point they are a dull-looking bean, and we got a sample of a fesh apple piece straight off the line. To make that final shiny jelly bean there is one more stop through the finishing room to be polished. There are dryers blowing inside the drum while the candy-maker is adding more ingredients for the polishing process.
These shiny beans are almost finished as they are allowed to rest once again in stacks that are six feet tall.
The entire batch must be run through these sorting drums. If the formed jelly bean is too small it will fall through the first screen. If it is too big it will be tossed out the end. Those two groups will be bagged and sold as "Belly Flops" or imperfect Jelly Bellies. Only the perfect ones will be individually stamped with the company logo so their customers know they are the real deal.
Since most of their jelly beans are bagged in combination packages, this room is used to start that process. Workers were opening up boxes and dumping different flavors on the conveyor belt. When all the different types were added, this conveyor takes them into the next room where they were mixed and packaged.
As we have seen in other factory tours, those lightning fast packaging machines often misfire. This person's job was throwing away jammed bags and splitting open damaged packages to return the beans back to the line to get properly sealed the second time.
There were four trucks backed up to the loading dock, where they were being automatically loaded with the individual cargo that was programmed into their computer system. It was interesting to watch boxes of beans tracking down the highway of conveyor belts, with intersections changing so they went into the proper truck. There are obviously lots of customers waiting down the road for these jelly bellies!
It was a great factory tour, with a color-coded track that winds throughout the factory. There were television screens for every window, with a 2-4 minute video explaining what was going on in the room below. It is self-guided, so people like us could stand and watch longer. We figured that a dozen groups passed us during our time on the tour. Because the company knows that most of their visitors are children, there are games to play along the way as well.
Between standing in line, taking the slow lane during the tour, and then shopping for candy afterwards, it was a three-hour stop in Fairfield. When we finally got back on the road, we still had another hour of driving to get to our new campground. We are traveling along highway 101 north through California now, so we are going through grape country. We are going beside Napa Valley and into Sonoma County--famous for their wine. We arrived at our second fairground campground in a row at Santa Rosa, California. The Sonoma County fairgrounds is our new home for a few days.
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