Amish Country

One of the main reasons I was MIA last week was that I had planned to take Friday off from work so Greg and I could go down to Lancaster PA for a little weekend vacation. In order to do that I was working around the clock to get caught up. Even then there was a crisis on Friday and I had to go all the way into the city for 2 hours to straighten is out (and discover there was actually no crisis as all!). Greg and I drove to Lancaster on Friday afternoon and arrived at our hotel around 8pm. We were supposed to go to a dinner theater production of The Full Monty that night but the 3 hour drive ended up being a 5 hour drive including 1 hour just to get over the George Washington Bridge and out of Manhattan, so we missed the show. Instead we enjoyed a nice quiet dinner in the hotel restaurant. The food was horrible but the conversation was very nice.

Oh, yeah. Our hotel was shaped and themed as a river boat! I can't forget that detail. A big riverboat maker from Lancaster decided to build a hotel like one of his famous riverboats in his home town. It had fake seagull noises playing outside, a Victorian lobby, and rooms with boat decorations. It was actually very nice inside. We just love strange attractions like this!

Saturday morning we headed out for a mud sale. These are huge auctions that are used to raise money for the local firehouse in the area. They are a big social occasion for the Amish people and a chance for us "English" people to mingle with the Amish. You can identify the Amish men by their straw hats in the photo. When we arrived Greg and I were shocked at how big it was. Now the Amish feel it is against their religion to have their photo taken so I was only able to get an overall shot of the scene. This picture shows the main part of the auction. There were actually 7-8 auctions taking place at the same time in different areas in the field. This was mostly farm equipment, tools, animals, and buggies (you can see all the grey Amish buggies lined up on the right). In another area was a massive furniture tent, a huge building for crafts and then a whole separate building for quilts plus food carts (the Amish love Auntie Ann's Pretzels apparently). We didn't bid on anything but it was cool to walk around and people watch and take it all in. We got to peek inside the buggies too. They don't lie when they call it a mud sale. The entire field is just a mud pit and are shoes were caked by the time we left. Note to self, next time bring boots!

The rest of the weekend involved touring the countryside, shopping, eating, and a nap on Saturday. We tried to visit the Mennonite Society because they have a life sized replica of the biblical Tabernacle which you can tour but we were 20 minutes late for the last tour (they were still on winter hours) which was a bummer.

Overall it was a nice and relaxing weekend.