Amish Country & Chocolate World

I’m a procrastinator by nature and I am way behind writing this blog – so I’m going to start again writing about today's activities and I will backtrack as soon as I can. I have learned that if I don’t keep this blog updated that I fall too far behind and then can’t remember what we did!

We left Danbury, Connecticut and made an unscheduled stop in Lancaster, Pennsylvania today. While traveling I called ahead to our Thousand Trails Park on the Virginia shore and found out they were evacuating due to Hurricane Sandy. We were told not to arrive. Plan B – make a plan B! 

I had always wanted to see Amish Country - so we drove to the Lancaster area. I just love the idea of a simpler, less complicated lifestyle. As we travel through Lancaster (the oldest inland city in the US) we admire it’s architecture and beauty. It’s a very diverse city – as well as brimming with activity. Andy gets sleepy from today's drive – so we pull over into a park and he takes a quick 10 minute nap. I google the area and come up with an itinerary for our visit. Andy awakes and off we go. I had wanted to visit Central Market – built in 1889, it's the oldest, continuously-run farmers market in the US - but as we arrive they are packing up their wares, we had just missed it. So we head out to discover Amish country. We pass lots of horse & buggies on the side of the road. I’ve had 3 horses in my life – I know how skittish and unpredictable they can be. I’m amazed that the horses pulling these buggies aren’t freaking out in all this traffic – yikes!

We head from town to town – stopping in the quilt and craft shops along the way. This is a very commercial area – and it is a MAJOR tourist attraction! Tour buses are everywhere – it takes a little of the magic away from this so called simple life. We stop in the town of Intercourse, PA and Andy has to stop and get his picture taken in front of the city sign – he loves it! He makes me check-in on facebook from here – funny, funny Andy!

We get tired of fighting the crowds so we head out on a rural road to (here it comes) Blue Ball, PA. Sorry folks.

Now this is the Amish country that I've wanted to see – forget about the towns – the scenery from the rural road is stunning. The enormous dairy barns and quilt-like farm plots are so beautiful. We pass a couple of young boys driving a team of draft horses in a field. We see a farmer moving his herd of cows to the milking barn. Young girls in their bonnets are riding bikes on the side of the road. Charming. The landscape is so appealing – it is like a painting. Can’t say enough about how pretty it is here – and to see all the Amish out working the land by hand – priceless.

We now head to Hershey, PA to take a tour of  Chocolate World. Can't go to Hershey and not see the factory. I'm a fan of the special dark chocolate. Never expected what we walked in to – its like Disneyland for chocolate lovers! There are a couple of different tours – lots of chocolate buying opportunities– and a Disney like adventure park (which we didn’t go to). There is an enormous sports stadium on the property – and a minor league soccer team was having a game. The entire town seems to be funded by the Hershey family – and they have been very, very generous to this area. We drove through a beautiful campus that we thought was the local university but we found out it was a private K-12 boarding school for low income children paid for by the Hershey Foundation. Very generous Hershey is. And delicious!

It was a great day in Lancaster and Hershey. When we got back to our park we found they were having 'haunted woods by hay wagon' tour – but we opted out. I’m not a fan of haunted anything. Lots of people were milling about and it was a beautiful night – didn’t even need a jacket. Several campers had decked out their rigs for Halloween and lots of kids were running around in costumes. There had been a Halloween party for the kids earlier in the day. Sorry to have missed it - I do love Halloween. Walked superdog around the park and called it a night. We'll worry about the storm tomorrow.