Lancaster County, PA

For those of you who have traveled in this direction (or who watch the history channel) you know that Lancaster County is Amish and Memnonite country. After the hustle and bustle of NYC, this area is a breath of fresh air - literally.

Yesterday we took a trip to Hershey, PA over on the west side of the county.

I was surprised at how long kisses have been around.

They have a wonderful FREE exhibit that takes you "inside" the candy making process via animation and an amusement park type of ride. There were times when I felt like Willy Wonka!

When the ride was over, the serious shopping and tasting began. Yes, we now have Hershey chocolate bars in a storage cabinet - good thing we drank up the wine we were storing there before. Great Day!

Today the B's took a trip to Philadelphia and Mike and I decided to explore the countryside. We started by having breakfast in a local cafe; 2 eggs, homefried potatoes, toast and "scrapple" for $2.95. Scrapple is a local breakfast favorite and reminded both of us of "wurst" we had when

we were younger. I remember dad getting it at Nerstrand meat market and mom not liking it. Both of us remember it being in a casing but this was not. It was very good!

After breakfast we headed north and east on the backroads of Lancaster County to see what we could see. There was substantial production of tobacco and that surprised us. Yesterday we had seen it hanging in barns and today we saw a fellow involved in harvest. Who knew they made "shocks" of tobacco like they did with corn years ago before tractors.

Buggys are not quite as common as cars but you still see a fair number of them.

We stopped at one roadside stand and I spotted these wreaths. Since I don't have a stable door on which to hang one, I had to pass it up and just took a picture instead.

There are many covered bridges in the county and Mike and I discovered a few of them today. Several spanned the Conestoga River.

These are some of the hard working people we saw today.

Can you see what this gent was doing today?

We stopped and talked for abit with Benjamin Franklin, a man who turns 89 on Saturday who was helping out at the Amish/Mennonite information area. He lives just three miles from where the tragic school shooting took place 5 years ago. He shared with us that 4 of the 5 who were injured are making good recovery and that one young girl has severe brain damage. In addition to the 5 injured, there were 5 who died. In addition to this topic, we talked about faith and he was interested in knowing if we attended church when we were on the road. He was a fruit farmer for all his life until he retired a couple of years ago. We enjoyed our visit with him.

Tonight a mother and daughter came around the campers in the park selling baked goods. I bought a shoo fly pie because the area is known for them and we all sampled it and agreed it was very tasty albeit more like a cake than a pie. When we were out and about today, we stopped at an Amish grocery and bought bulk jello, homemade noodles and jam so we are going away with full cupboards.

Tomorrow we head to Atlantic City for the weekend.

P.S. Aren't you proud of me... I didn't even mention that we enjoyed Intercourse, or found Paradise disappointing or got lost by Blue Ball and I didn't say a word about Bird-in-Hand... yes, these are all names of towns in Lancaster County.