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What Do Candy Canes and Ohio Have in Common? Answer: Spangler Candy's Factory Tour

Whether you like it or not the holiday season has definitely arrived, so you might as well embrace it. That’s why now's a good time to skip out on the holiday shopping—and maybe work—to see how all those candy canes get from the factory to the store.

Spangler Candy makes tons of candy canes each year, and they’ll be more than happy to show you how all the sticky and stripe-y creations come together. If peppermint isn’t your thing—don’t worry—they also make Circus Peanuts and Dum-Dums.

The factory is open each day of the week during the summer, but during the winter months the doors are open to visitors between Wednesday and Friday from 10am to 3pm. They’ve got a little store—for souvenirs of course—and museum, but they do recommend giving a call to ensure they’ve got a spot for you since it’s first come first served.

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Photo Gallery / Best Factory Tours / Vermont Travel / Fall in Vermont Field Trip / Best-Factory-Tours-Map / Ice Cream Travel / → All Tags

Inside the Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream Factory Tour

What's better on a rainy fall day in Vermont than a pint of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream? Nothing, that's what. So last week when we found ourselves up in the Green Mountains, we did a road trip to Waterbury, to the original factory and home of Ben & Jerry's for their production tour. We ate ice cream, we got rained on in the Flavor Graveyard and we spent way too much on souvenirs.

The biggest obstacle to taking the Ben & Jerry's tour is getting up to Waterbury, because believe us—this place is rural and without any nearby public transportation. The options aside from renting a car and road tripping there is to join a group bus tour, and that was definitely the most popular option when we visited. Whole busloads of German, Welsh and Japanese tourists dropped by, in addition to Americans on fall foliage tours.

Once you're up at the factory, it's not long until the ice cream starts flowing. Pay $3 per adult for the tour, or check-in on Foursquare to get the tour for free.

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Get Going in a Winnebago with a Visit to Their Iowa RV Factory

As you jam and shove those last minute essentials into your car before taking off and diving deep into the middle of traffic on the turnpike, you might realize that a little more room could make a summer road trip more pleasant. An RV is always an option, as long as you can get the thoughts of cliché family vacations out of your head. Sure they aren’t for everyone, but if you want to see what they’re all about before whipping out the checkbook you can always take a tour of the Winnebago factory in Iowa.

Winnebago Industries will be happy to show you around their facilities, and best of all they’ll give you the factory tour for free. You’ll see employees putting final touches on different aspects of the motor homes, as well as robots doing their thing to make sure all those welds are textbook perfect. Be on the lookout for upside down RVs outside of the factory, as the Winnebago workers like to flip over their final products to check for structural integrity.

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Take the 4:20 on the Pineapple Express at Dole's Hawaii Plantation

Sure, Hawaii has breathtaking beaches and lush landscapes, but after some time it all begins to blend together. You can only take so much beauty before you need something to break up your relaxation, and that’s why we recently made a stop into the Dole Plantation on Oahu. Of course it’s a tourist trap filled with novelties, magnets, and collectible thimbles, but it’s one of the best darn tourist trap that we’ve ever been to.

Back in the good old days, the Dole folks actually used the land in and around the plantation to grow their cash crop and ran a little fruit stand, but now most of their pineapple bucks come from places like Costa Rica. However, that means they can now devote all the extra volcanic farm land to selling souvenirs—we’ll freely admit that we bought a shirt that says “Hug a Pineapple” and it would definitely make the tacky t-shirt list.

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Watch Candy Canes Get Twisted In Denver

Become an informed consumer while still on vacation! Check out Jaunted's newest series of the best factory tours the world over.

Thanks to those radio stations that only play Christmas music, we’ve had thoughts of candy canes dancing through our head since Thanksgiving. Instead of just licking through a few of the sweet treats and drooling over some of the great holiday travel deals, we decided to do something about it, like take a tour of a candy cane factory. Right in Denver sits Hammond’s Candies, and they would love to show you around their place.

They’ve been making candy since 1920, and they continue to do things the old-fashioned way. You'll find more than just candy canes at Hammond's though; they have peppermint straws, clove pillows, and even some candy coal for those that have been naughty this year. Miles of ribbon candy including bunches formed into snowflakes are flowing through the factory now until the big day later this month.

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Get Your Craft Beer From An Airplane Hangar In California

Beeeeer. While it's the drinking hour already here on the east coast, over in Los Angeles and Long Beach, they've still got a few more hours before it's socially acceptable to pop the top on a cold bottle of Hangar 24 Craft Beer. We were originally turned on to the unique Hangar 24 Brewery in Redlands, CA by the Lomography website, after someone used their fancy, artsy camera to capture the place's brewing magic and its hangar location.

Hanger 24 is relatively new to the microbrewery scene, having only opened in 2008, but the dream began in the skies:

Hangar 24 Craft Brewery began with a true passion for good beer, the absolute love of flying and the pure enjoyment of being around great friends. Founder and Master Brewer Ben Cook and his buddies used to meet at hangar 24 after an afternoon of flying to trade stories, talk aviation, play music and share a few cold ones that Ben just finished brewing at home.

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Zombies And Factories Just Go So Well Together, Especially In Columbus

Become an informed consumer while still on vacation! Check out Jaunted's newest series of the best factory tours the world over.

In this year's surprise horror comedy hit "Zombieland," a college student attempts to find out if his parents in Columbus, Ohio are alive. If you find yourself in the position of having to flee from a zombie invasion, you may want to hide in these Columbus-area factories—so take the tours now, just in case.

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Take Some Louisiana Flavor Home From A Tabasco Sauce Factory

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Put some spice in your next trip by seeing the forest preserve where the multi-plumed Tabasco bird romps and plays. Okay, that's not really how Tabasco sauce is made, but if you never visit its Louisiana factory, how will you know for sure? No wonder it made Travel and Leisure's list of the coolest factory tours in the world.

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Tour The Boeing Factory And Enter The Largest Building In The World

Become an informed consumer while still on vacation! Check out Jaunted's newest series of the best factory tours the world over.

We'll admit, today's featured factory tour may be more of our dream than yours. After all, you can ride in airplanes constantly without needing to know where they, so to speak, come from; it's that old saw about watching the sausage get made. But we've always wanted to go to the Future of Flight, and we envy the lucky travel writers who have already been to Boeing's pricey but exciting factory tour.

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Eat Your Olympic-Rejection Feelings At Eli's Cheesecake In Chicago

Become an informed consumer while still on vacation! Check out Jaunted's newest series of the best factory tours the world over.

Sorry, Chicago, your fifteen minutes of fame are up now that you weren't chosen for the 2016 Summer Olympics. We made your senator a President and your talk show host queen, but it's time to go home. It's not you, it's us!

But on the bright side, you have Eli's Cheesecake World to comfort you in your hour of need. President Obama enjoyed a slice of a 500-pound cake at his inauguration in January; now maybe he and Oprah can split a pie together.

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Hershey's Adds Make-Your-Own Chocolate Tour

Become an informed consumer while still on vacation! Check out Jaunted's newest series of the best factory tours the world over.

The branded town of Hershey, Pennsylvania already contains an amusement park and Hershey's Chocolate World, perhaps the closest analogue to Willy Wonka's factory after Cadbury World. But the American brand may have just pulled ahead with its newest attraction: Make your own chocolate!

Two new classes a day at the Hershey Chocolate Lab get visitors up close and personal with the company's tasty treats. Learn about the different varieties of cocoa beans and global tastes for the sweet stuff at "Planet Chocolate," or design your own blockbuster in "Build a Bar." (It's just like Build-a-Bear, but way more delicious.)

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Head To Cape Cod To Crunch On Potato Chips Made In Town

Become an informed consumer while still on vacation! Check out Jaunted's newest series of the best factory tours the world over.

Why settle for sitting at home on your couch eating chips when you could be out seeing where they come from? We'll spoil the ending of the Cape Cod Chips' factory tour and say that yes, it does end in a free bag of golden salty deliciousness—but consider making this a detour on your obligatory fall foliage tour.

The Cape Cod company was founded in the '80s with an eye to creating a healthier potato chip (Ed. note: hah!) by cooking in a shallow vat of oil instead of a giant tub like the big guys used. You can still see this process, producing what we call kettle chips, at the company's Hyannis factory, where it all began with a storefront for tourists and a guy who had taken a potato-chip-making class.

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