Sunday, November 27, 2011

To the East: Dutch Country

The morning of September 29 found me deep asleep on a semi-flat air mattress that felt more like a hammock than a mattress, wondering why people were whispering about me.  Then, their snickering gave them away, and I fought off the cobwebs enough to see Suzie and Bethers standing in the doorway all ready to start our 3 days of adventure in Beth's current corner of the world.
Today's destination: Lancaster County - well-known for its Amish community, but previously nothing more than a place on the map to me. First impression?  Look at all the farms!  Like real, contained, independent-looking farms with their towering silos and green fields all around!
And then a buggy passed us, cruising amongst the cars with a family aboard.  Not tourists, not newlyweds, just people with somewhere to go.  Hopefully someplace as exciting as our breakfast destination - where the very friendly chefs grilled us a customized breakfast of Farmer's omelet, Philly Cheesesteak omelet, and 3 kinds of pancakes!  That is the way to start a day.


















Of course, we had buggy on the brain and went in search of someone to give us a ride in theirs.  We met Miriam (in blue shirt) and Bertha (tied to the hitching post) at Aaron and Jessica's Buggy Rides.  They took us, and some stranger city folks, for a spin down to a local dairy where we could learn all about life on a farm!
 
Hold the laughter.  It sounded better than making cookies or going shopping!  
Miriam talked to us about the lifestyles of the different groups of  "plain people" on the way to the dairy, and we couldn't help but be amused at the familiarity of it all.
We felt right at home with the moo cows and a tricycle in the "right color,"...




 ...we loved the idea of having a pony on the farm, and we wondered about the difficulty of building a big ol' barn held together with wooden pegs.

 The things that stood out to me as obvious lifestyle differences came in the form of a garage for buggies, and a functioning one-room schoolhouse.  It felt a little like time travel...

We spent the afternoon driving around the countryside in search of covered bridges (see next post), and stopped at the Dutch Haven to try a few traditional foods for lunch.
The shopkeepers were kind enough to let us sit in their for-sale Jumbo Rockers while we enjoyed our soft pretzels, homemade root beer, red velvet whoopie pie and America's Best shoo-fly pie (hiding under all the whipped cream).   
 We may have had a little too much fun in their gift shop...
 

1 comment:

Moose said...

It looks like so much fun. There is no better friend than a sister. I definitely thought it was funny you went to see how life on the farm was.