Jelly Belly Fun

Yesterday Chablis and I drove up to Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin to attend the World Wakeboarding Show and on the way we stopped to grab a geocache called The Jelly Bean Forest.  I've said it before and I'll say it again, one of the best things about geocaching is the unexpected places it takes us.  I had no idea that the Jelly Belly Company had a factory right over the border in Wisconsin and the name of the cache didn't tip me off to that either.  So when we pulled into the driveway and saw the Jelly Belly sign, we knew we were in for a treat!

Are you familiar with Jelly Belly Jelly Beans?  They are well known for their wide variety of jelly bean flavors such as root beer, bubble gum, cotton candy, cherry, raspberry, chocolate, buttered popcorn, mango and blackberry.  When you bite into one, the flavor explodes in your mouth.  They are little sugar globs of goodness.  They also have the Bean Boozled Line of jelly beans with flavors like skunk, vomit, pencil shavings, rotten egg and canned dog food.  I did not try any of those.

Right out in front of the factory are a couple of Jelly Belly cars....

We were just about to walk into the store when Chablis spied the sign for the factory tours.  We walked down to the tour entrance and got into line.  The tours are free and only take about 30 minutes.

We got lucky and only had to wait about 5 minutes for the next tour.  They have signs outside marking 30 minute and 45 minute waits, so I felt 5 minutes was a breeze!  As we walked in they gave each of us a paper Jelly Belly cap to wear and we then boarded a tram for the tour....

One of things that I found interesting was the jelly bean artwork.  Each piece of artwork was created using thousands of different colored jelly beans that had been arranged like mosaic tiles....

The tour itself runs around the warehouse, not the factory itself.  It consisted of about 7 different stops and at each stop we sat and watched a short video clip about the history of Jelly Belly's and how they are made....

The warehouse was spotless.  You could seriously eat off the floors, it was that clean....

When the tour was over they gave everyone a free bag of assorted Jelly Belly flavors and dropped us off at the Jelly Belly store.  Inside the store are huge plastic containers of all their jelly bean flavors.  All you have to do is grab a bag, pull on a lever, and fill your bag with as many jelly beans as you want.  They are then priced per pound at the check out counter.  They also had a sample bar where they passed out free samples of every flavor.  We walked down the line and filled our bag with raspberry, chocolate, licorice and caramel popcorn flavors to take home.

Our tour concluded, we walked around to the side of the building and searched for the geocache that brought us to the Jelly Belly Factory in the first place.  I think the cache container was appropriate, don't you?