If you’re looking for a place to hide out for a few weeks while seeing doctors and physical therapists, I have to admit you could do way worse than Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It’s a quiet place at first glance, and if you stick to the highways, you might not give it a second glance on your way to Philly or Pittsburgh or somewhere else. This post may convince you to stop over and stay a while.
The city itself is a mix of old and new, with architecture and eccentricity creating visual delights like this section of a downtown street.
There’s an old cemetery a few blocks away where patriots from the War of Independence are buried, graves carefully marked and maintained. Lancaster is a place that values its history.
When you venture out of the city a few miles, it’s all farmland, so lush and green that it’s like driving through a painting.
This is Amish country, so on any country road, you may meet a horse and buggy. You give them wide berth and pass when you can.
The horse-and-buggy traffic is so ubiquitous that Costco even has a covered shed where they can park while shopping! Even the Amish shop at Costco.
Speaking of covered things, there are a couple of covered bridges here, just to round out the whole experience. With a weight limit of 3 tons, I’d have to leave Breeze behind (my whole rig weighs in at 7,000 pounds). Lucky for me, my friend Larry was driving us around in his car. (The cover photo at the top of this post is actually the inside of the covered bridge.)
There are more tourist things to see in Intercourse. Yes, that is the name of the town. As a bonus, I caught a buggy in the shot of the town sign. There is a beautiful quilt store here, way out of my price range, but I loved looking. Across the street is one of the best quilting supply stores I’ve ever seen, and it made me want to get back to quilting (if only my left hand agreed with that crazy idea).
Farms, silos, corn, and tobacco: I’m surrounded by these things at my campground this week and I don’t mind it one bit.
I’ve spent a few weeks here, and it’s on my list for more in future. Consider putting it on your bucket list, too.
Be life long or short, its completeness depends on what it was lived for.
Amish proverb
So glad you’re enjoying your stopover there. Bird in Hand, you’re making the rounds! (Where do they get these names??) I hope the humidity isn’t making your hair curl too much and you are not typing too much. Do take care as you do all your exercises! Your post led me to look up the place I used to work, Mr. Bill’s Seafood Market. This was ~30 years ago – yikes! Long story, but I ended up there for about a year and loved it. I learned so much about fish and customer service. I thought it was funny that I was asked to run wholesale deliveries as part of my job once I’d started… I didn’t know the roads or the restaurant operations at all; I just had a pickup truck. Turns out, Tim still owns and runs it; a high integrity, real stand up guy. I think very fondly of him and my time there. It’s on Harrisburg Pike just on the edge of town if you get a chance to stop in for a clam bake, softshell crab or something equally scrumptious. Highly recommend!
Hey, Sue, good to hear from you (I owe you a letter, I’m pretty sure, but typing is slow these days…). I didn’t know you spent time here, how cool is that! We had a great time window-shopping in Intercourse then a trip to the Bird in Hand bakery (that ice cream is amazingly creamy). This is such a beautiful area!
We were on Ronks Road today on our way to the Bird in Hand Bake Shop. 🙂
Annie, you are in one of my old stomping grounds! I lived in Lancaster, then Ronks, outside of Strasburg, which itself had one stoplight, one bowling alley and two bars. Did you see it? If you blinked you’d miss it. I always chuckle when remembering that Intercourse is a town right next to Paradise (next to Ronks). I imagine the Amish community has continued to assimilate to some extent… on oh so cold wintery days, not uncommon to thumb it for a ride into town; Lancaster General Hospital is sometimes a necessity; Costco, ok! Cheers!
nice story – nice town-and nice to have friends who live in such a great place.