Lancaster, Pennsylvania, is beautiful.
It’s not until you get outside of town do you really see the true beauty
of it. Hills and hills of beautiful grassy pastures. It threatened
rain the whole time we were there but finally held out until the day we
had to leave. How’s that for timing?
This was my first trip to Lancaster and if
you don’t count the views from a bridge we had to cross from New Jersey,
it was also my first real trip to Pennsylvania.
I love mountains and wasn’t sure I’d see
any. I didn’t, but what I did see were miles and miles of hilly
farmland which was just as good (the car’s engine took a little
beating…I don’t know how it would have held up if it were any hillier).
On the way to our room, this is what you
saw quite often. This is a big no no according to non-Amish people, but
to the Amish, they’re used to it. They say, “I don’t know why you’d
want to take our picture.” It’s not that they hated (hate isn’t in
their vocabulary) you for doing it, they just didn’t see the reasoning.
All of the buggies were the same color.
Their main message to each other is that no one is more important than
the other. I learned so much about the Amish. It’s really quite
interesting to find out why they lead such simple lives and there’s
quite a few lessons they could teach us if you paid close attention.
The picture thing for example. They did
not take pictures of themselves – not even their children as they were
growing up – and you’d never see any pictures of people on their walls.
They had other things on their walls but no people whatsoever. They
believed that everyone was equal and no more important than the next
person.
Before we hit the room, we decided to stop
off at what they call the Green Dragon Farmer’s Market. This place was
HUGE. I was so excited, I didn’t take but a couple of pictures and this
was one of them. This is actually in the humungous parking lot. There
are places for cars to park and places for buggies to park. See if you
can find the buggie. ;o)
This is two of our 8 head party heading
back after spotting a buggie. You do that a lot here. In time, you get
used to them but if you’ve never seen one before, they’re really neat
to catch a glimpse of as they fly by (and I do mean fly…these buggies
can boogie!).
So this is on our way back from the Green
Dragon Farmer’s Market. We had loaded up on fresh breads, pies, canned
this, canned that, you name it, it was there, and went to find our
room. Let me tell you something while I’m thinking about it. If you’ve
never owned a navigator (I hadn’t but the friend whose car we rode in
did), you have really missed out on an experience.
And so this is our home away from home. Picture taken on Sunday when it did rain, but the skies remained rain-free until then.
So we’re checking the room out…it’s very
very clean, smelled great, so we’re happy with our decision to stay here
instead of the ritzy hotel in town (might have to do that one next) and
I look out one of the windows to see what’s out there and I say, “Kim,
come quick! Look out the window!”
Another buggie parked at a convenience
store across the yard there. It took all of five seconds before we were
grabbing a camera and ran out to get a close up.
Kids. What can you do with them. Show us a
buggie and we’ll show you a picture we snapped of it no matter what
lengths it takes to get it. No matter what people might think of you.
No matter if you look like a tourist. You gotta have that picture.
One thing that annoys me about living here
on the island is that when the tourists come, it’s like you’ve lost your
home to them but this experience did give me a better understanding –
when you’re vacationing, it’s time to have fun.
