Why Did Brick Smell Like Chocolate This Morning?

If there's one thing that we have a lot of in New Jersey, it's smells, some definitely better than others (the ocean breeze is wonderful! Exit 100 on the Parkway, not so much).

But this morning, I caught a whiff of one that was totally new to me for Ocean County.

Brick smelled like chocolate.

Now, I need to qualify this - I consider myself a well seasoned connoisseur of chocolate scented neighborhoods.

Before I moved back to my home state of New Jersey, I was working in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

The radio station that I was working at had their studios in the small Central Pennsylvania town of Elizabethtown, which you've probably never heard of.

But there is something notable about "E-Town" - it's just down the road from the center of the U.S. chocolate universe, Hershey, PA, and has an M&M Mars factory nestled among the farms (which, believe me, depending on which way the wind blows, can make for quite a unique odor).

So, I like to think that I know when there's chocolate in the air.

And for some reason, that's what I was smelling in Brick this morning.

At first I didn't think much of it, I figured that a neighbor must have been baking brownies or something.

But, as I meandered through my neighborhood on my pup's morning walk, the smell stuck around.

And I can't think of a good reason why.

Believe me, I tried to get answers.

There weren't any accidents involving vehicles hauling chocolate.

While there is a chocolate factory in Ocean County, it's not particularly close to my neighborhood, and it wasn't that windy this morning.

Today was indeed National Cocoa Day, (thanks to Vinny on Facebook!) but I can't really imagine that the hot chocolate industry has that much pull, that they can literally make America smell like hot chocolate for a day.

Did I imagine it? Did anyone else notice it?

Stop by our Facebook page and tell me that I'm not crazy!