Amish Country, Pennsylvania

Yesterday we waved goodbye to Ms. Liberty and the Manhattan skyline, worked our way through Jersey City (no easy task when dragging a 34 foot trailer), and headed south on I-95 toward Pennsylvania. We arrived at our campground in Adamstown, PA around 3:30 with plenty of time to set up camp, get another hour of "school" in, and still make a quick trip to the grocery store. At Weaver Market, we saw lots of women in old-fashioned clothes with little white bun covers in their hair. We discovered later that the store is owned by a Mennonite family (who lives next door to Teressa's niece Randi) and that many of the customers we saw there were Mennonite and possibly some Amish. We are near the heart of Amish country.

Our next stop was Randi and Ron's house. Randi is Teressa's sister Marilyn's 2nd daughter. They live in Denver, a little community about 7 miles from our campground. Although we have seen pictures each year of their boys, Brad and Ryan, Teressa had only met them once at a family wedding. Brad is 10 and Ryan is 7 and they are both hockey players. Even Ron has taken up hockey so he can coach the boys. All the cousins (cousins once removed, we think) played Xbox while we visited. We even got a short trumpet concert from Brad. Randi fixed a great dinner of ziti, salad, brochette. It was fun to see their home and neighborhood and to sit outside on the brick patio visiting by the outdoor fireplace (which Ron built). The evening ended too quickly...they went back to work and school today, and we toured Amish country.

Brian and Laura did a couple of hours of homework in the morning in Adamstown before we left our campground. After breaking camp we headed south through Amish country, arriving at the train station in Strasburg just after noon. Founded in 1832, Strasburg boasts one of the oldest train right of ways in the world. Today they operate authenticate coal powered steam engines with beautifully restored passenger cars. During our nine mile round trip the fireman shoveled half a ton of coal into the firebox, and the engine consumed 1000 gallons of water. Averaging just over 12 mph, we passed a number of Amish farms in the rolling countryside. It was interesting watching them harvest corn using only horses to pull all the equipment. We also saw several Amish horse drawn buggies cruising through the streets of Strasburg. The Amish try to live a very simple existence, with no electricity, cars, or even curtains in their homes. The railway makes donations through a land trust to help some of the Amish farmers preserve their farms in the face of growing urban sprawl.

We arrived at the Round Top RV Park just south of Gettysburg at 5:00. That was later than expected, as we experienced the worst traffic jam of the trip so far. It seems strange that traffic delays in the rolling hills of Amish country in rural Pennsylvania could be worse than Boston or Chicago, but they were on this Friday afternoon. The backup happened as we were trying to circumnavigate the highway north of York. A stretch of 5 to 6 stoplights on the highway created a half hour backup. I guess if that’s the worst congestion we experience on the trip, we should count ourselves fortunate. We have been successful so far taking mass transit and avoiding big cities at rush hour.