Amish Country in PA

I told myself that I'd keep these posts short, but once I start, I just get myself into this detailed story-telling documentary mode, and next thing I know my whole life has come out on my blog page. Accidental, perhaps; but good for the posterity, definitely. I'm sure this will all be of deep interest to our children someday, even if blogs are completely outdated, obsolete, and uncool by then.

So I've always wanted to go visit the Pennsylvanian Amish communities in Lancaster County, and Jon and I finally had our chance on our way back from the B&B. This was such a fun experience that we'd recommend to anyone in the area to take advantage of. It was totally fascinating to us. Before I delve into our experience, I just want to throw it out there that we left with a great appreciation of these people their hard work in their lives, their cool accents, and their amazing skills that have allowed them to become so developed in the most simple, humble way. We were impressed, and any that we spoke to were so nice.

Jon and I always like to study up before we go somewhere so that it's all in context for us when we get there, and on our way there we read that the Amish don't like getting their pictures taken for religious reasons. But then we went on a buggy ride run by an Amish family, and the old Amish man that took us told us we could take all the pictures that we wanted. New liberties granted, we kind of went crazy and tried to catch every Amish person in a buggy, scooter, or otherwise sweet form of transportation, that we could. Don't think we're terrible people, it's just unbelievable there, because we felt like we were hanging out with the pioneers, but it's the 21st century, and they aren't acting! It was awesome. Our buggy driver said he and his wife vacation in Florida every winter, and we wondered what exactly they do there for fun. No matter. He took us around a couple Amish farms and told us a little more about their lifestyle. Short, but totally worth it.

We also went to this "Old Schoolhouse" to see what it was like. We were thinking there would be someone in there to just tell us a little more about it, but we were instead greeted by 30 Amish schoolchildren manikins, and their 3 matching teachers. I'm not gonna lie, it was kind of freaky. The lady running the place put on this record thing playing a story that explained Amish/Mennonite schoolhouses, which was sometimes accompanied by a sharp movement from one of the manikins. I really thought one of them would break when they were raising their hand or pulling some girl's hair. It reminded me of the part in Goofy Movie when Goofy makes his son Max go to that freaky theme park where those machine-operated bears are playing in some country band in a theater. If you haven't seen it, just know Max was creeped out, as was I in the school house. Entertaining to say the least.

Creepy schoolhouse aside, we also went shopping and got some Amish jams, root beer, and cookbooks. The quilts were amazing, but super expensive. We actually spent most of our time driving around to look at all the cool farms (their land and houses are AMAZING, they keep everything up immaculately well, they were the best houses out there) and trying to get pictures of everything we wanted to catch on camera, i.e., the buggy crossing sign, the clotheslines that seriously go 50 feet in the air, an Amish person on a scooter pulling a trailer behind them, and other such featured essentials of Intercourse, Pennsylvania. We're proud to say that most of our photo hunting proved successful.

Following the hunt, we ate at the recommended Family Cupboard Amish food restaurant, where Jon was in heaven, a.k.a. mashed potatoes and gravy land, and where I had to constantly resist snapping more photos of the sweet do's we saw in there when the working men came in and took off their hats. It totally reminded me of my bro's hair during snowboarding season, but with a killer beard. Don't worry, we didn't take any pictures. Talk about self control.

Regrets: we didn't get to the Kitchen Kettle until after it closed, which is where all the best shopping is, so we hear. And we never got to buy Amish ice cream. Who knows if it's any different/better than what you can get at your local grocery store, but we sure wanted to find out. Note: everything there closes at 5. Maybe 6. Go before that.