Gone But Not Forgotten

As usual, our girlfriend getaway flew by far too quickly. It seems like just yesterday I was visiting with Tracey’s chickens. But that was five whole days ago already…

This photo, from left to right, shows Tracey, Carol and me.

We’re sitting inside a gazebo, which is behind a craft store about 1/4 mile outside of “downtown” Intercourse, Pennsylvania.

The entire area is interspersed with Amish farms. I bet Lancaster County has the highest concentration of barns and silos than any other place on the planet.

If you’d like to know how Intercourse got its name, you can read about it on the Pennsylvania Dutch Country Welcome Center Web site.

Carol, Tracey and I have been visiting Lancaster for 14 or 15 years now. For one long weekend each year, we get together to hang out, relax, shop and catch up. There used to be a fourth member of our little group, Laura, but she hasn’t joined us for at least five years, maybe more. We all lost touch over the years, which is sad, because it’s rare to be able to maintain friendships from childhood into adulthood as Tracey, Carol and I have managed to do.

We’ve been friends for more than 30 years. That’s a long time.

Anyway, I did manage to get some pictures on Saturday, which show you the area around East Lancaster where we spend most of our time.

I actually snapped that shot of the Amish plowman while driving. The Amish don’t like having their pictures taken. You can’t blame them. I’m sure they get sick of being gawked at.

The entire area is interspersed with farms, houses and quaint little shops. There’s a cute little village center in Intercourse, but with the weather being sunny, in the 70s and absolutely gorgeous, everyone was out and about. None of us like crowds, so we opted not to hang out in town.

These girls were parking as we were leaving The Old Candle Barn. I guess this is what we’d look like if we were Amish. Except they have a child with them. No children are allowed on our trip, even if they are all adults now.

Instead, we headed to King’s Homestead, one of many stores in the area selling Amish furniture, crafts and other household knickknacks. I took this picture from the parking lot.

I’ve long suspected, and just now confirmed, that this store is affiliated with another King’s across the street from our motel as well as another King’s just down the road from our motel. It’s amazing that all of these places manage to not only stay in business, but thrive.

Here’s another picturesque Amish farm. I took this one while I was driving.

When we were finished shopping in Intercourse, we grabbed some hoagies from WaWa and headed back to our motel to chill. Because it was so sunny and warm, people were coming out of the woodwork to soak up the nice weather. I’ve never seen so many people sitting around a motel parking lot. These cows were in the field just behind our motel.

Did you notice the bunny rabbit in that picture? The cow and the rabbit were checking each other out. If you click on the picture, a larger version will pop up for you to see.

You can see what a pretty day we had in this shot, which was taken by me just as we were leaving to do more shopping.

And that’s a picture of me, which was taken seconds after the previous image just as we were leaving to do more shopping.

The weather was even prettier on Sunday. Below are a couple of shots taken during the drive home.

I couldn’t resist this cow picture…

All in all, it was a fabulous trip. I bought lots of cool stuff, too. I’ll have to tell you about that in another post.

The rest of the images from the trip are in a Picasa Web album.