Amish Countryside

Thank goodness we are home before dark and I can get the blog done early and sit back and watch the ball game.

Spent the day over in the Lancaster area in Amish country, it was a beautiful day in a beautiful area, the time just seems to slip by.

Every farm seemed to have a few mules.

Our first buggy, if you look closely you can see they are rigged with lights.

We saw lots of buggy's, I think being Sunday they were on their way home from church.

Took a little detour into a state park, a few people out picnicing.

We were surprised of how many young adults were out riding.

When we were in New Brunswick we were told of a Dutch cow that looked like an oreo cookie, so I have been on the lookout for one, today was the day, isn't he cute.

Hershey

We spent the whole day in Hershey Pennsylvania, Milton Hershey created this model industrial city and I am sure every resident would tell you it is wonderful, the kind of place you would want to raise your children. As he and his wife had no children he left his entire fortune to the town and a school for the less fortunate.

We started at the museum which was very well done, it did a good job of discribing how he went from rags to riches with a few bumps in between.

Mr. Hershey created a huge theme park as he wanted lots of recreation for his town people, we went to the World of Chocolate, which is free.



You get on a ride and it takes you through the process of how he makes a chocolate bar, very amuzing.

And when the tour ends you end up in this huge candy store.


We then took just a little drive around the city to see a little more of it.

The lamp posts are kisses, so cute.

We took a drive through the school he developed it was amazing and then having to pass a couple hours before our evening entertainment I drug Ron through the garden. As it has not froze here yet the roses, mums and dahlias were still beautiful. It was all decorated up for fall.

Across the town you could see the stacks from the actual factory, and note below the stacks some of the theme park.

The garden had hints of hershey, these kisses would send magical hisses of steam up through the tops as you walked by.

Some really cute sculptures.

A good pumpkin displays.

The Japanese garden was lovely.

This one if for Matt and Curt, knew the would like it.

When I see these little statues, I miss my kids at home.

Great sculpture, right down to the mud on his foot.

Overlooking the town.

We had a good day and finished the day with a hockey game, the Hershey Bears, the AHL for the Washington Capitals vs Scranton Penguins (AHL for the Pittsburgh Penguins). We had never seen such a clean arena, and when the evening was over, everyone picked up their garbage to put into the trash cans, amazing.

Just a little note to our son-in-law Mike and grandson Curtis, who lost his mom(Curts grandma) this week, hope you are both doing okay, our thoughts are with you everyminute of the day. Love ya.

Gettysburg

Wow, what a day we had in Gettysburg, everyone should have the chance to visit this important historical park.

We started at the visitor center, it was huge, besides the regular restaurant and book stores there were two theaters, a circlegram theater and a huge museum. The visitor center alone took us over 4 hours.

Here is a picture of Abe Lincoln, the man most would hold responsible for the Civil War.




The circular theater is a 377 degree round painting, which was actually done in 1889, was almost destroyed before the National Park service got ahold of it and in 2008 became this wonderful setting for the theater.

Before leaving the visitor center I bought an audio tour for the 24 mile path we would drive to see the actual battlefield, you have never seen so many monuments and cannons in all your life and everyone told a story.

Seminary Ridge was where General Lee ordered those poor Confederate troops to charge across the open field on a charge into the Union lines.

The fall colors made everything look so wonderful.





The Virginia Memorial had General Lee and his horse Traveller on top.

James Longstreet was the poor General that Lee ordered to give the fateful order to send the men across Seminary Ridge.

Just a quick peek out across the countryside.

Gettysburg was known as the battle with the most casulties of the Civil War, over 52,000, dead, wounded or missing.

We started our audio tour ride at 230pm and it was to take 2 and a half hours, so now as you can see the sun is setting and we are not quite finished, by the time we get to the cemetry it is to dark for pictures.

We drive by the cemetry and listened to the audio tour but that part of our day must come to an end but we did find a varsity football game and even though it is pretty cool tonight it was fun to go.

Our time in the Poconos

Hello everyone, well I have a little catching up to do. The Poconos were a hit, except for the lack of internet we enjoyed our time here immensly. We drove every back road they have in the area and found so many interesting spots.

We spent time at the genealogy center in Peckville(Blakely) and the library in Jessup, however we did not find much, the fellow(Joe) at the historical center said people back then did not care, and most things were just discarded, also anything from the very poorest, like the Irish immigrants was just not wanted. Got some good stories and we did find William Caddens naturalization papers.

The picture below is the valley that they lived in some 160 years ago.

Scranton is just 10 miles from the Blakely area and we went in to visit the Anthracite Museum.

Our first stop was at the Iron Furnaces, they were making iron here in the early 1800's.

Downtown Scranton

The Antracite Coal Museum was wonderful, they did a very good job of telling the history of all the immigrants that came from Europe to the valley to work in the coal mines under such poor conditions.

Here is a picture of the entrance to our park, we were 10 miles back from much civilization but it was quiet and pretty.


Another day we went back to Scranton to Steamtown, Ron was in his glory, but I have to admit it was quite interesting. We had a guided tour through the roundhouse, where they were rebuilding a steam locomotive.

When I went to go to the truck, I found this little fellow holding onto the car for dear life, I thought it was cute but one of the rangers came and shooed him away.

About 20 miles away is the town of Nicholson, now CP Rail has bought up alot of the railway around this area and they actually operate this viaduct now.

Looking up was kinda awesome.

So this morning we moved 180 miles to the bottom of Pennsylvannia just west of York. From here we will visit Gettysburg, Hershey(yummy) and Lancaster county where the Amish live.

Our park is okay but the freeway is just out our door, coming from the hills we will have to adjust.