Tour Wisconsin's Jelly Belly Candy for inside look at jelly beans

Sweet look at small, mighty Jelly Bellys
Photos & feature by Lisa Meyers McClintick
With Easter coming, jelly beans are on the brain--and so is one of the Midwest's sweetest factory tours. Pleasant Prairie, Wis., isn't officially the producer of Jelly Bellys, but this distribution center offers a fun train-like ride that explains the process of creating gourmet jelly beans with videos shown along a playful loop tour.

Pleasant Prairie sits near Kenosha, midway between Milwaukee and Chicago. At the Fairfield, Calif., home factory in the Bay Area, you also can see actual production of Jelly Belly candy being made. Tours at both locations are free and so are the sampler packs given to guests at the end. Just don't expect to leave without buying more--not if you have kids in tow.

Jelly Bellys endure past the 80s boom
The little jelly beans with a big taste were first created in 1976 and became the cult candy of the '80s. Jelly Bellys really rose to fame thanks to President Ronald Reagan who used them to kick his pipe-smoking habit and passed them out at the White House. The blueberry flavor was invented so the company could do a patriotic red, white and blue mix.

Soon Jelly Belly boutiques opened in shopping malls to showcase their astonishingly accurate flavors of root beer, watermelon, cotton candy and even buttered popcorn. If you grew up in that era like I did, it was the best thing since Bonne Belle Lip Smackers.

From worst jelly bean flavors to the best
When Jelly Belly started, there were seven flavors. There are now 50 official flavors. They're the core. But there are close to 200 flavors when you add up special lines such as Bean Boozled, inspired by J.K. Rowling's imagination in the Harry Potter books. Remember Bertie Bott's and deceptive flavors that could be ear wax?

It's like Halloween with all the double-dog-daring you can do.  Bean Boozled look-alike flavors are are either delicious or downright disgusting. What looks like peach may be barf. Licorice could be skunk spray, and top banana could be pencil shavings. You've got a 50-50 chance of a sweet surprise or a nasty one. Of course kids might not blink at ones flavored like toothpaste or boogers.

Do you dare to taste the dog food?
Bellying up to the bean tasting bar at the Pleasant Prairie visitor center was the most memorable part of our tour. Think wine tasting bar for the kiddie set. The swill bucket to gag in would have come in handy as you can sample one jelly bean at a time and suddenly regret trying to out-gross your kids with daring choices.

But can we be blamed? With a company that made amazingly accurate tastes its forte, it's tough not to try even the ickiest of flavors.

Curious about a jelly bean labeled "centipede"? It looks like strawberry, tastes like dirt. Canned dog food? Just like it sounds. I quit after sampling "baby wipes." Ewwww. We quit at before moldy cheese, skunk spray and barf.

Instead of palate-cleansing crackers between sips of red or white wines, you've got sympathetic employees handing over tangerine beans to eradicate or at least mask the vile taste of rotten egg. That was my husband's misfortune to taste.

Favorite Jelly Belly flavors

Our tour guide told us it takes 11 days to make a jelly bean, and new flavors can take months to develop and perfect. Kiwi, in particular, was a challenging flavor to get just right. You'd think it would be easy after figuring out caramel corn, strawberry cheesecake, margarita and toasted marshmallow.

There are several specialty lines, such as sours, sport beans that supposedly have electrolytes like mini-Gatorades, sugar-free beans, Soda Pop Shoppe that tastes like bestselling soda brands and a Cold Stone Creamery Ice Cream Parlor Mix with flavors such as apple pie, birthday cake and strawberry blond sundae. There's even a superfruit mix with natural sweeteners.

Ideas always are coming in from customers, but they can be pretty bizarre. Our guide rattled off, "Macaroni and cheese, pickles, ketchup and mustard" to name a few. Sounds like a kids meal that just needs a burger and fries.

Most flavors are more traditional but fun: chili mango, strawberry daiquiri, wild blackberry, tutti-fruitti and Dr. Pepper. Very cherry and buttered popcorn still top the charts of customer favorites.

Our favorite souvenir: the cheap hodge-podge bags of jelly candies labeled "belly flops." They sell a lot more sweets here beyond jelly beans--even a big case of chocolate truffles--but it's the colorful, quirky Jelly Bellys that rule as the star attraction.

Tours run 9am to 4pm at 10100 Jelly Belly Lane, Pleasant Prairie. You can call 866-868-7522 for more information.

Door County with frost: Cozy and quiet

Cave County Park, Door County, Wis. Photos by Lisa Meyers McClintick.

Take in the Lake Michigan scenery and enjoy sleigh rides, skiing, wine tasting and more in the blissful quiet of winter.

At Door County's Cave Point Park along Wisconsin's thumb, Mother Nature cued up new chords on a crisp January morning. Sun warmed the water, and waves nudged wafer-thin shards of nighttime ice to the rocky shore. They shooshed forward with a rhythmic tinkling and constant crackling.

Even more alluring was the brilliant blue-green of Lake Michigan. It hugged limestone cliffs undercut with caves and a snow-white shoreline. Caribbean-colored water lapped against icicles strung as delicately as chandeliers.

Ice shove near Peninsula State Park

"She's singing," Dwight Zeller said of the lake after we ran into each other looking for good photo opportunities.

Zeller manages Door County's historic site at Cana Island Lighthouse station in the warm months, but says winter is his favorite season on the 75-mile-long peninsula.

"If you're looking for a single-word answer," he said, "it's 'quiet.'"

Grab the Sunday Star Tribune

To read my full feature on a Door County's winter vacation, check out the Star Tribune. It ranks as one of the best travel sections in the country.

This week's lead story is by Catherine Watson, the section's former editor. If I can pick one writer and photographer to guide my armchair travel to places such as Petra or Mexico's Day of the Dead celebrations, she's it.

A few more Door County picks 

Best eats

It's a tie between baked goods and cherries.

Sweet treats: The Inn at Cedar Crossing's "morning rolls," an addictive and wonderfully chewy version of cinnamon buns using croissant dough. Also dangerously delicious is Skorpa, the Village Cafe's buttered, chewy twice-baked cinnamon twists.

Cherries a-plenty: From hot mulled wine and cider to cherry barbecue, pies, juice, jams, dressings and even brats, Orchard Country has it. Sleigh rides, too!

Creative haven

In all my travels, Hands-On Art Studio, ranks as one of my top 10 happy places. Admittedly, I was the camp counselor who was happy being at the craft hall all day, but this place is superb.

The converted rural barn and outbuildings hum with kids and grown-ups playing with stained glass, mosaics, metal jewelry, pottery wheels, spin-painted T-shirts and even fire as staffers teach how to handle blowtorches and plasma cutters for metal sculpture.

As tempting as it was to play with fire (it sounds cool just to claim that), I'm thrilled with vibrant mosaic mirror I chose. If you take a good friend along (that's my friend, Amy, on the right), it's even better.

My Hands-On Art Studio mirror makes me smile every time I pass it. That's what the best trip souvenirs should do.

For more info on travel to Door County, click here.

Return to Door County in the spring to enjoy its festival of blooms. 

Soda or pop? Does it matter?

Whether you're from Minnesota where we say "pop" or Wisconsin where "soda" rules, you'll be able to tip back and swig the tastiest drinks at Eagle River, Wisconsin's, Soda Pop's. I'm a sucker for quirky places where singular passions reign. It doesn't hurt that I'll take soda pop from a glass bottle any day of the week over a humble can.

I'm also old enough to remember the 1980s fad of soda pop places where you could buy mix-and-match crates loaded with any flavor under the sun, from pineapple to green apple.

Those places are long gone, but Soda Pop's brings together every soda pop you can think of much like the best pubs assemble the greatest microbrews. You can find old-school Coca-Cola, Green River, Nehi orange, cherry limeade and close to 150 others. Don't miss grabbing some Sprecher root beer, a complex dark brew sweetened with a good kick of local honey. It's delicious. You can also make this one of those vacation-perfect lunch stops with the store's soda fountain. It's a great fit for an area that bustles with three (or more) generations of vacationers making summer memories together.

Feed the bears in Minocqua
Soda Pop's is in downtown Eagle River, 27 miles east of Mincoqua, the hub of all things "up north" in Wisconsin (much the way Brainerd is Minnesota's epicenter for lake vacations). It's easy to take a break from the water and go explore area towns and tucked-away treasures such as Soda Pop's.

Left: Lake Minocqua's vintage boathouses glow at sunset--the ideal time for a pontoon cruise.

Right in Minocqua and a true delight for kids is Wildwood Wildlife Park. It seems too modest of a name for what’s an impressive zoo with close to 700 animals. It has that homey feel of a place that's family-run, too, where relationships with the animals get personal. Kids love feeding ravenous goats and sheep, watching otters play, and seeing exotic animals such as tigers. The biggest stars, though, are often the bears as they swim in a pool and greedily guzzle the custom “bear juice.” It's probably the one glass-bottled sweet drink you won't find at Soda Pop's. The Wildwood folks make their own blend of juice that they bottle. You can purchase it from a vending machine and feed the bears through a secure fence ($8-$12; 715-356-5588).

Read about more of my vacations picks for a Mincoqua-area getaway--from an Objibwe living history site to some of the best pancakes you'll ever taste--at www.startribune.com/lifestyle/97669074.html.