Amish Visit and Gettysburg

 In Pennsylvania, there is a place called Lancaster and Intercourse (yes, you read right). This is known for its Amish communities and is a nice place to drive around and explore the markets, stalls and covered bridges. We started at the Lancaster Markets which was not as big as we'd hoped but it was full of food, fresh produce and baked goods. We bought some whoopee pies and few other pastries and then headed off to the Bird in the Hand markets a bit further away. This was big more bigger with more arts and craft and home made foods. We bought some jams and had some lunch before visiting an Amish Farmhouse. This is an old house that tourists visit to learn about Amish culture both in the house and on the farm. 

It was a fun hour or so and my sister go to do some pumpkin chunkin'. This is where you put a small pumpkin in a slingshot and fling it out to the paddock hoping to get it into this big bucket. We nearly wet ourselves laughing as her three 'chucks' were just so funny. Deb was keen to see some covered bridges so she googled some bridges and we were driving all over the countryside to see these bridges. They are nice but, after two, I'd seen enough (poor Deb). But we continued to a third bridge and maybe a fourth, I can't remember. I guess we all remember the romance movie Bridges Over Madison County and the covered bridges - sadly none of these bridges had any of the charm of those bridges.

We tried to have dinner in town before heading back to DC but about 5000 other people had the same idea. This place is popular and the mass of tour buses didn't help our chances of getting a feed at an Amish restaurant.

 

 

There were lots of roadside farm stalls and we stopped at one selling pumpkins for Halloween. I've never seen so many different pumpkins. There was a young girl with her mum and given we were Australians who have no idea about pumpkins, I sought the advice of the young girl. She recommended the best pumpkin to carve, the ugliest ones and how to display them. 

I had $20 and we spent $19 so I told her the spare $1 was a tip for her expert advice. We loaded the car up and felt just a little bit more in the swing of things having bought our first Halloween pumpkins.

 

My sister continued her Civil War history lesson by visiting Gettysburg, also in Pennsylvania.  I've previously written about Gettysburg back in Sept 2016 so I won't rewrite it here. The quick link is: Gettysburg Sept 2016

It was a dreary drizzling rain day but it set a good mood for the adventure. I tried to book a guide to jump in our car and drive us around the battlefield but, they were booked out. So instead, Plan B was to buy the audio guide CD and drive around the battlefields ourselves. Before we headed out to explore, we checked out the museum and the cyclorama (360 degree diorama of the battlefields). I've seen this before but I love this stuff and it was great to see it again and learn a bit more. My sister did not know the size of the battlefields so it was interesting to hear her initial thoughts on the battle after the museum. So we put the CD on and off we went. There were about 16 stops and the CD was excellent. It talked to us as we drove around and then gave us a great explanation to the attraction stops.

 

 

At the end of the day, we went to the Gettysburg National Soldiers Cemetery which is the cemetery where Lincoln gave his famous Gettysburg Address and thousands of civil war soldiers are buried. It was an information overflow day but my sister certainly grasped the key players in the battle, the significance of the battle and enjoyed the day.