Our road trip through Amish Country

Our road trip through the Amish Country

So last Friday I picked up Caroline in Philadelphia and after a short toilet break, we got into the car and drove out of Philadelphia again.
On my way to Gettysburg I drove through little villages such as Intercourse and we headed this way again.

It took us a while to get out of Philadelphia, it was just as busy going out of the city as it was getting in.
But the best was yet to come…I had already driven this route before, but I still managed to get us to go the wrong way!!
We drove around and managed to find our way back, so all was good in the end.
Caroline was driving again and I had already warned her about the Amish driving their horse and buggies on these roads. I had one in the afternoon, who wanted to get off of the road, just as I was coming up a hill!!
Fortunately now they have blinkers to tell us where they want to go and they have lights and reflectors (?) on the back of their buggies. But they didn’t have that in the old days, a lot of accidents happened when they were driving in the dark without these lights on their buggies!

So, it was Friday night and just like the week before, we thought we would just go to a motel and get a room for the night…only it turned out not to be that simple….
We had tried 4 different motels and none of them had any rooms left!!! Around 7pm we decided to get something to eat, before we really started to get cranky! I had seen a ‘50’s diner on my way to Gettysburg, which is where we stopped and had a really great burger!!!

After dinner we hit the road again to try and get a place to sleep, it was 7:30pm and it was getting dark already. We tried at least another 5 more motels, before we found one where they had one room available for us!! But of course this one asked for double the price they probably normally charged!!
I had never been in this situation before, I have always been able to find a place to sleep just going to a motel when I needed to get a room!! It was really frustrating!!

It was kind of hard to decide wether or not to take the room or to continue looking for something cheaper. By this time it was 8:30pm, it was dark and we were tired and grumpy. Plus there was no telling wether or not we would find a motel with a room for us, let alone if it was going to be cheaper…
So we took the room for that night and got our stuff.
As soon as we were in the room we started to look for a motel for Saturday night, so we wouldn’t have this problem again!
We had our own beds again and we slept pretty good!

The next morning we had bagels and yoghurt for breakfast pretty good! There were some shops in the area and we found one called Christmas Tree Store, thinking this would be a Christmas store…but it turned out to sell everything but Christmas trees, or ornaments for that matter!! Don’t understand why they gave the store that name though.
We also went to a Disney store, where we saw some cute stuffed animals and Caroline found some t-shirts for kids of a friend.
They wished us a “Magical Day” when we left and we figured that we could never, ever work in a store like that!! Being friendly to customers is one thing, but this makes the enamel of your teeth come off, it’s that sweet and after a couple of days of that, we would be walking into walls!! Haha

After this stop we drove on to Intercourse, can’t remember why the town got this name, but it must have meant something different from what it means now, I’m sure!!
This is where the Kitchen Kettle Village is, where we wanted to go. The weather today kind of sucked, it was dark and raining all day.

We went to the Olde Candle Barn first, where they had all kinds of candles and neat stuff to decorate your house.
In the Village there were a lot of small shops and since it was raining, we decided to look into all of them!
We had a hotdog at the café and a cappuccino and tea in the coffeeshop later that day.
We’ve found some nice things! We went into a quilt store, where they sell quilts made by Amish women. Very expensive, but when you hear about how many hours of work they put into making one, you understand why they ask those prices!! They were really beautiful!
We talked to one of the ladies that worked there and she told us that she was born in New York and had moved to Pennsylvania some years ago for the peace and quiet. She told us her family was from Denmark originally and how she would like to go there. She liked our country too, said she would like to visit there as well, so I said that we might meet again there some day. She was jokingly asking for my address.
So later we went back and I gave her my business card, told her that if she ever planned to come, she should send me an email and I could show her around…that kind of blew her mind I think!!
She kept thanking me!! Not sure if she will ever take me up in that offer, but that was not the point. It felt good to give it to her, I know what it feels like to be on the receiving end and I’m sure I made her day!

We managed to spend all of the afternoon here without realizing it!! Before we knew it, it was 5pm and the shops were closing!!
So when we were done, we went to find our motel to check in and get rid of our stuff. It was one of those independent motels, no chain and it was nice. We were on the 1st floor and it had carpet on the floor in the hallway!!

We had a room next to a family with two small kids and we hoped they wouldn’t keep us up all night, especially since there was a connecting door…
So we dumped our stuff, Caroline called Eddie to say hi and then we went out to find some pizza. We found a Pizza Hut, where we had some yummy, but too big pizzas.
Before we were halfway through our pizza, we realized we were the only people there…our waiter gave us our check and he told us we could ask for boxes if we needed them….but he came and brought us the boxes before we even asked for them…it really felt like we were being thrown out!!
So we left the money on the table and left, no one saw us go!!

We went to bed on time again, the kids next door didn’t bother us, because they came back after we had already gone to bed. So they must have been asleep already…only as soon as they came in, they turned on the tv….and left it on ALL night!!! It wasn’t on that loud, but since we were right next door and didn’t have our tv on, we could still hear it!!
It was really strange, when we got up to take a shower the next morning , it was still on!
We had breakfast with bagels and mini muffins!
And had to figure out what to do on a Sunday, when most things are closed in the area. We found a brochure of the National Christmas Center, which was open and we thought that might be a nice thing to do.

So we left when we were ready and went back to the Disney store first, to change one of the t-shirts into a smaller one. But it was 10:30am and the store didn’t open until 11:00am. So we went to Target first, where I found a nice pair of pants and a shirt to go with it. We managed to change the shirt and then decided not to go to the Christmas Center anymore, the weather was nice and we just didn’t feel like it.
So instead we drove over to Strasburg, which has a train museum and an old fashioned steam train you can go for a ride in.

On our way there we saw an Amish Village and we went to see it. They offered a tour through an Amish house and a bus tour through the Amish country side. We only went for the tour through the house, we had a car, we could drive around ourselves.
The house we walked through was lived in by an Amish family in the 1900’s and the lady that gave the tour, told us about Amish life through some artifacts that they used in those days. She really did very good!

We started in the living room, where she told us that church services were held every other Sunday from 8 till noon. All of the families would gather in the living room of one family and then the benches would be taken to another family for the next service and so on, so you wouldn’t have all of these people in your house every other week. Then after the service the family of the house would provide a light lunch. Now they drive horse and buggies, which are not going all that fast, so if they have to be somewhere at 8am for a church service, they would have to be on the road by 6:30am at least…And on the Sundays that there are no services, they visit each other. So when you are driving around on a Sunday and you would see a lot of buggies in one front yard, you would know it was either a service or a visit!!
There was not a lot of decoration, only thing was a big piece of paper in a frame, nicely decorated, that had the family’s history on it, so and so married so and so, the names and birthdates of the children and so on. Much like Catholic people would keep track of their families on the front pages of their bibles.

The Amish live very plain, they don’t use electricity, but today they do use propane gas. They cook on this and their fridges work on it as well. We also saw that they use small appliances like mixers and for the lights in the buggies they use batteries.

And she told us that they do have a phone, but not inside the house. When you see small buildings on their property thinking that to be an old-fashioned out house, that would be where the phone is. Not sure what they use it for, but we know they don’t pick up on Sundays!

They also don’t use metal on their clothes, like big buttons or belt buckles, it’s all wood or plastic.
And the kids are not baptized when they’re babies. When they are 16 they get to do what is called Rumspringen, where they can go out and see the world…from their parents houses that is! The boys get to have their drivers licenses and drive cars, but they will never own a car. (being a taxi driver for the Amish can make you rich from what I understand!) Of course all of this is more for the boys than for the girls, they only get to go out for pizza and things like that.
Then when they are 19 they get to decide wether or not they want to be baptized. If not, it’s ok, they can go their own way, but if they do decide to be baptized and then either don’t want to be in the order or do something that is not allowed, they will be thrown out of the order and will be shunned.
The lady said only about 12% leave the order, which we thought was not all that much, considering Catholic churches are very empty at the moment in the Netherlands.

After the tour through the house, we walked around the terrain. There was a farm where we found Pete, a mule who looked really sad or maybe he was just asleep I don’t know. And of course there was Mr.Ed, a horse! He loved having all of those kids there who fed him!! There were small horses, a calf, sheep, goats and piglets.
We walked into a school, which has only one room. Here the children only learn how to read and write and math until the 8th grade. Then the boys learn how to become famers or carpentry and the girls learn everything there is to know about how to run a house. There was also a black smith and a general store, very nice!

When we were done it was time to eat. It was already 1:30pm we were getting hungry. It wasn’t all that easy to find something to eat in that area. But in Strasburg we found a deli that was open, where we had a nice hotdog. I used the restroom in there, which had wallpaper that looked like bookcases, very nice!

We walked around a little before we went back to the car after lunch It was kind of strange, but there was a house right next to a church, the back yard of which ended up in the church’s graveyard….creepy!
In another graveyard the headstones were so old you could read them anymore.
We didn’t feel like going to the train museum or take that train ride, so instead we just kept driving toward Paradise.
Along the way we saw houses with the propane gas tank outside and a lot of buggies parked in front!
We did stop on the parking lot in front of that Christmas Center, but there were only 2 cars there!! Which probably belonged to the staff that worked there anyway, so we were glad we didn’t go there after all!
We were done for today, we filled up with gas and kept on driving to Philadelphia!

And of course it was busy again! I had thought to drop Caroline off at the house and keep driving, but seeing it was this busy on both sides, I decided to sleep here and continue tomorrow.
So we drove to the supermarket in the area to get dinner and Caroline could get some of the heavy stuff since we had the car anyway.

There was no place to park the car in front of the house, so we parked the car in front of the garage that belonged to the house. Just long enough for us to get our stuff out. We got everything into the house, then Caroline got everything upstairs and I went to find a parking space for the car…
That was no easy thing to do!! It was very busy and then I thought I had read the signs wrong, something about now being allowed to park without a permit, but that was only during weekdays. So I went around the block again and came to a stop sign. Now I have driven a car here a couple of years ago, but just before I came down here I thought it would be a good idea to read up on the rules…so I read that at a stop sign for all corners, the person that stops there first, is also the person that can go first.
So I was there first, I stopped and when the other person stopped, I went first…then this black women started calling me a White Bitch, because of course she thought she was the first one at the stop sign…but she wasn’t so I just went and ignored her. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I was also coming from her right…
Anyway, I found a great parking spot after that, so it was all good!!

We had some soup and pasta for dinner. After dinner we sat on the bed and made some arrangements for our weekend to New York, next weekend.
But that of course is a whole different story!!

Love
Linda and Caroline