Setting out to see maybe the greatest hockey arena still standing, I'd went as far as Greyhound would take me in Harrisburg. Now it was on to a city bus for 45 minutes, heading east out of the capital and making many stops on my way to Hershey, Pennsylvania.

One of those stops was actually at a...K-Mart? And now that I was unencumbered because of leaving my backpack behind the desk at the Harrisburg Train Station, I briefly thought of hoping off and taking in the closing sale.

Except I came here for the Hersheypark Arena. As much as the strangeness of going to my first K-Mart in 20 years tempted me, I stayed on the bus with the one other passenger and soon we rolled onto Hershey's main drag.

I figured I could get off at whatever seemed like the downtown stop since Hershey isn't all that big. The arena was just across the tracks from the main strip.

Stepping off the bus, my initial impressions of the town weren't very good. There was a lot of stucco, infill stores and vinyl siding. Hershey was also a lot flatter than a lot of the other towns I've seen in this area, so it didn't have houses all stacked up on each other like so many of the picturesque towns in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and western Maryland.

It was a lot like the main streets back in Southwestern Ontario. No exceptional buildings, everything evenly spread out, and most of the houses lacking any ornamentation. I was so unmoved that I didn't even realize the streetlights were shaped like Hershey's kisses.

Making my way under the railroad via a narrow, 1-car tunnel, I could see the barrel roof of Hersheypark Arena up ahead, but there was an amusement park and a fence channelling me like a salmon down a stream. I couldn't hop the fence either, seeing as I wasn't trying to sneak into an active amusement park.

So I headed along the curving, sprawling roadway, until it was going completely west and I had the amusement park and arena totally at my back. I was starting to wonder how many people ever walk in this amusement park town.

This road seemed like it wanted to bring me all the way back to Harrisburg, so once I was past the amusement park fence line, I went into a construction zone dirt lot and then found my way down onto a forest trail. It was time to cut through the bush and shorten things up as my feet hurt and I was grumpy with the lack of sleep.

What do we have here? A bonus old stone staircase for my troubles!

As far as I can tell, this was part of the Parkview Golf Course, which was built under the direction of Milton S. Hershey in the 1920s. Often ranked as one of the better public courses in SW Pennsylvania, it closed in 2005 and Hershey Corp is currently constructing an expansion of their Chocolatetown on the land.

This was all well and good, but Spring Creek now stood in front of me and everything I wanted to see was on the other side. Going back up the hill, I followed another path until I emerged into another construction zone and headed south back to Park Blvd.

Looking at a map now, this whole shortcut endeavour into the forest brought me a grand total of 300m down Park Blvd.

Another 15 minutes up the road, as I continued to move further and further from the old arena, the road would of course spit me out at the new arena instead.

Still frustrated with how pedestrian unfriendly this all was, I turned into the Giant Center to ask how the hell you get to the Hersheypark Arena, while giant RVs and campervans sped by me to set up in the parking lot for a recreation show.

Once I finally made it to the ticket booth, the guy inside seemed surprised with a pedestrian, but let me know that I only had a little bit more to go until the main entrance for the amusement park and Chocolate World. Once there, it was just a short walk past this "Chocolate World" and I'd be at the old arena.

I was still over a kilometer away, but I'd finally found the weakness in Milton Hershey's border wall and infiltrated this chocolate world. I briefly entertained popping into the giant chocolate/candy store just to make sure I was going the right way & maybe buy some presents for friends and the missus, but I was met with a sea of screaming, hopped-up children so I did an about-face and fled into the parking lot.

A few minutes later, I finally found myself in a sea of calm and beauty at the Hersheypark Arena and could hardly believe it.

Today the Hersheypark Arena is only used for high school, college and pickup sports; while the AHL team moved over to the $65-million dollar Giant Center in 2002.

As I was here to watch the local Lebanon Valley College Flying Dutchmen (Division III), I had seen that their attendance is usually around 300 or 400, but the outside was still awfully quiet for a game day. Whatever though, this meant I was able to move around freely without having to worry about people getting in my pictures.

Before going inside, I needed to grab some dinner though. Which in light of finding everything so unfriendly to pedestrians in Hershey, meant walking on a 2-lane highway in order to get something to eat.

(Hilariously, I didn't realize there was a pedestrian path just 15 feet to my right.)

I ended up at a Red Robin, which was fine and did the job. I'm not quite sure why I didn't walk the extra 10 minutes to the highly-rated brewpub, or 8 minutes to the neighbourhood spot that would have given me a greater feel for Hershey, but I must've been tired of walking, or maybe I just felt like a chain restaurant.

There still weren't many cars outside for this colossal matchup of the Lebanon Valley Flying Dutchmen and the Morrisville State Mustangs.

At least there were some workers though, so I figured I could now go inside.

Except the lobby was totally empty. I walked over and peered into the arena bowl to find the ice taken out and most of the lights turned off, so as I went back to the ticket counter and heard someone in the back, I thought better of hollering to make my presence known, in case there was no game and I was going to be asked to leave.

Even though I'd wrote the Lebanon Valley hockey program to make sure they still play here, something was up & there clearly wasn't going to be any hockey at the Hershey Sports Arena tonight.

From the ice hockey tile motifs in the lobby to the stylish font of the section signage, I already felt like I was transported back in time to an age where arenas were built like cathedrals.

Emerging into the seating bowl, I knew I should have seen this place long ago based on the pictures of others, but it was even wilder in person. The cavernous, barrel ceiling with supports painted in ochre like Fallingwater, accented by the old school brown, red & blue wooden seats, even more signage in that old school font, and the American Hockey League division leaders board still in place.

When I said in the opening paragraph that this might be the greatest hockey arena still standing today, I meant it & struggle to think of anything in the same league. Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, maybe?

Milton S. Hershey was born near Hockersville in 1857. He would apprentice as a teenager at a candy confectionery in Lancaster Pennsylvania, before moving to Philadelphia and opening up his own candy shop. His shop in Philadelphia would only last six years, and then he would fail again in New York City, so Hershey then moved back to Lancaster to create the Lancaster Caramel Company, which was innovative in its use of fresh milk in the production of caramel (yum!)

Hershey would become more interested with chocolate than caramel in the coming years & soon sold his Lancaster Caramel Company for $1,000,000. He then purchased land near the Derry Presbyterian Church in Derry County to start construction of the world's largest chocolate factory in 1903. Then, believing that happy workers are good workers, Hershey built a vocational school in 1909 and then provided extra jobs during the Great Depression by building a community centre, hotel and arena during that time.

Hockey was always a surprisingly good draw in Hershey. The original arena was known as the Ice Palace, where hundreds of fans were frequently turned away because the place was full (and this was the 1920s/1930s, so you know the place was full.)

Hershey realized the need for a greater arena and tasked his Hershey Lumber Company manager D. Paul Whitmer with the job. Through his contacts at the Portland Cement Company, Whitmer was put in touch with German engineer Anton Tedesko, known for his progressive thin concrete construction methods.

Tedesko, seeing opportunity here, designed an enormous, extravagant arena for Milton Hershey. Hershey was initially skeptical of the need for such a monumental building, but the innovation and modern design excited him too much to turn it down. Ground was broken on March 11th, 1936.

Tedesko hired a construction manager who then hired 250 men, along with 4 concrete mixers and 2 elevators - except the men had no experience in mixing concrete. This left Tedesko to oversee all of the construction himself and pouring began on June 2, 1936.

The roof was to be five giant concrete forms, with expansion joints between them at the arches. These concrete pieces would stand 100 feet above the floor at the highest point, but also only 3.5 inches thick at that highest point. Beginning on that day of June 2nd, 1936, the men started pouring the first of the five concrete pieces, with teams of men starting at each end and continuing to pour concrete 24 hours a day until they met at the ceiling after 14 days. This process was also complicated by the fact that Hershey stipulated that all construction wood be of the same size that it could be reused in the construction of homes afterwards. This left the men working upon a scaffolding made up of over 300,000 board feet of yellow pine.

Despite Tedesko's and Hershey's fears, this first concrete form settled and didn't collapse under its own weight. The workers became better and better with concrete and the subsequent forms didn't take as long or elicit such worry, leaving the arena to open on December 19, 1936.

It's said that the Hershey Sports Arena was the first arena of this stature to open without obstructed views, but just off the top of my head, the "Cathedral of College Basketball" - the Palestra in Philadelphia, was opened 9 years earlier, seats 8725, and doesn't have obstructed views either.

The sparse lighting struggled to illuminate this cavernous space and therefore I was really struggling to take pictures. I was wholly at the mercy of the few illuminated lights and whatever objects I could wedge my body against to try and steady my camera.

Obviously I would have brought a tripod if I knew this was going to happen, but instead I'm left to post grainy and/or blurry pictures. On the other hand, this arena was so awe-inspiring that it kept squelching any annoyed thoughts I was having with these mediocre pictures.

I saw someone across the arena when I first came in, but since that time, I didn't see a soul. Walking a quarter of the way around the seating bowl, I went back into what I thought was the concessions area, looking for someone who could tell me what was going on and what happened in regards to tonight's game.

Instead of finding any security or rink personnel, I found the locker room tunnel like your average neighbourhood rink...

Along with locker rooms, trophy cases, old concession stands and rollaway seats.

When I'd later complain to friends about this - riding a bus from Pittsburgh, then a city bus from Harrisburg, just to go to Hershey and there be no game and having to walk around an empty arena - I had to laugh at the type of friends I have because not one of them gave me any sympathy. Instead they reacted with jealousy at how fortuitous it was that I was able to check out whatever spaces I wanted to in the old arena.

Okay, maybe once I got to these areas where I clearly wasn't supposed to be, did I start to feel like I was lucky to see this side of the old Hershey Sports Arena.

Pretty sweet to be able to see the underside of the seating bowl where onlookers watched the famed 100 point game from Wilt Chamberlain. The same place where Don Cherry made his pro debut with the Hershey Bears of the American Hockey League.

Dio!

Was this like Houston Texas and Nailhed had beat me here too??

I had no idea where that security guard or rink manager went, but he was nowhere to be found underneath the seating bowl. So I wandered out on the cement floor of the ice area, still wondering what was going on with the Division III college hockey game that I was missing.

As much as it was special to see these intimate parts of the arena, there was still a letdown that I wasn't seeing a real game here and the excitement that comes with it.

Around this time I looked up and there was the rink manager or security guard again, looking down from up in the concourse like Sting. So I retreated into the depths of the Hershey Sports Arena and found my way back to the main entrance, where I finally ran into this dude who told me that the college game had been moved over to the Giant Center because they were repairing some seats here.

He then pointed at a section and they had to be repairing maybe 16 seats. It was a spot with four seats wide and four rows. The Lebanon Valley Flying Dutchmen couldn't make do with 7,270 seats instead of 7,286?

Making my way back into the night and over to the Giant Center, I was greeted with a folding table and a freshman telling me that the price of admission was pay your own price, just in order to help out the team. I briefly thought about telling him all about my efforts to get here and see his Flying Dutchmen at the Hersheypark Arena, but realized just how little some college guy would care about such boring misadventure.

So I still paid $5 to enter the game because I'm a polite member of society, and it wasn't this kid's fault that the Flying Dutchmen don't have better social media channels.

Taking my seat with no one around as the 300 attendees don't really make a mark in a 10,500-seat arena, I gawked at the gleaming, sterile rink built in 2002. I imagine people enjoy the comforts and the warmth of the Giant Center, but I don't know how quickly I'll come back to check off the Hershey Bears from the list of American Hockey League teams I've seen.

In my opinion, the best part of the Giant Center was this sign for Kegel's Produce! I'm such a child, lol.

Anyyyyway, the game was entertaining enough and I was happy to be watching live hockey, but I also had a bus to catch and the level of play wasn't high enough to risk being stuck in Harrisburg or Hershey.

Leaving at the start of the 3rd period, I anxiously went outside to make sure I caught my cab. But then I waited, and waited, and fans started to pour out as the game had finished & I was still waiting. It was now getting close to my Greyhound bus departure time and the one or two cabs I saw kept driving on the arterial highway outside the Giant Center.

Now one thing I hate more than anything is calling a place back to harass them about when something will be ready. I had to here though. So I called the taxi company back and the dispatcher replies, "Oh! You actually want a cab? Yeah, we get a lot of prank calls from Hershey & we figured it was a prank call."

WHAT THE F. What kind of policy is this?!?

I kindly explained to the man that yes I was a real person, now having stood out front of the Giant Center for about an hour, while my Greyhound bus was about 30 minutes from departure. This thankfully got the guy moving & a cab showed up in no time, with a entertaining cabbie that knew my predicament and raced through the Pennsylvania night, running amber lights and speeding, trying to get me back to the Harrisburg Train Station on time.

Paying him while the car was still moving, I jumped out and rushed into the station, running through its oversized and empty halls, only to find that my bus wasn't even here yet. LOL.

At least my backpack was still behind the counter and no one had claimed it in the meantime.

About 45 minutes later, my bus from Harrisburg arrived and I then listened to music as the dark night flew by and I watched the lights of all the exits flash in that way they do on busses where you can't see anything until it's right on top of you.

Grabbing some sleep until I was awoken in Pittsburgh, I had a sleepy, mean-mugging hour layover around 3am, before boarding another bus and getting right back to sleep.

All of this disjointed sleeping left me pretty tired by the time I reached Akron around 630am, but I was still in another city that was new to me and that was fantastic.

Continue to Part 3...