Amish, Pennsylvania

Amish Countryside
Amish Girls Walking in Fields (Typical Dress)

Amish Lawnmowing with Mules

Amish Tilling with Mules

Amish Farm

Jennie's Diner

We have just had 4 fabulous days in Frederick, Maryland, which is where I used to work during my USA posting in 2002/2003. Our good friends Jan & Dick provided a picturesque driveway in their wooded property where we parked our RV. While Murray went on a fishing trip, Jan & I watched one movie each day, shopped and beaded. Fun! Dick came with us to see Tom Hanks in the new release 'Angels & Demons' and we all enjoyed it. The movie was set in Rome and each incident in the movie took place in a well known tourist area where the 4 of us had visited together in 2003, so it was fun to watch the movie together and remember our visit there! We also got out the DVDs 'Nights in Rodanthe' (a chick flick that I enjoyed especially after driving through there so recently) and 'Doubt' - Meryl Streep is always good. We also saw Will Smith in 'Seven Pounds' - took a while to work out what was going on. Murray had a 3 day trip with Buz up to the family cabin in Pennsylvania, almost up to the Canada border. Buz's 4 brothers also joined the guys and they say they caught over 120 fish (trout & Bass) between them. They also saw a black bear and 2 cubs in the woods, and some wild turkeys (they also drank some Wild Turkey of the bourbon kind!).

Today we woke to the best day of all, but sadly, it was time to leave and we were driving out by 8.30am. We only got 20 mins up the road when we realised we didn't have our mobile phone - I had left it downstairs when we watched a movie last night. So we turned around and retrieved it. Within an hour of us starting out the first time, we were on our way once again.

In less than an hour we entered Pennsylvania and drove past Gettysburg. We recalled our previous interesting visits there at the Civil War sites. Travelling another 50 miles we reached Lancaster which is the heart of Amish country and the oldest Amish settlement in the USA. Being spring, the countryside is at its best and looks so rich and fertile. I have taken several photos to give you an idea of what we saw today. The Amish continue to use horse-drawn power, and wear plain clothes - usually dark material. For those who are interested in knowing more about the Amish people and their traditions, you can check out this link, which has additional links down the bottom of the page. http://www.800padutch.com/amish.shtml. We drove for miles around the farming areas before finally checking into our campground for the night.

Just out of Lancaster we saw a Diner where we had our first ever American Diner experience back in 2002, so we just had to call in again and have lunch in Jennie's Diner. On our first visit we couldn't work out why there was a queue out the door - we found out from a chap in the queue that this Diner has retained the genuine 50's era set up (right down to the mini jukeboxes at each booth), and is supposedly world renown. He said it was the second-best Diner in America although it didn't register on the top ten American Diners when I checked today, so perhaps it was a personal assessment! Anyway, as before, the service and food was excellent.