Today's plans included quite a bit of driving. One of the recommended things to do in Amish Country was a self-guided driving tour to find Lancaster County's covered bridges. I knew this would be a great opportunity to see a lot of the countryside, and since we were on our own, we could make stops as often as we wanted. Armed with my trusty map of how to get to the bridges, we set off on our adventure.
The first stop on our adventure was the post office; we had to mail out some books. Nothing impressive here. Just a typical post office... that just happens to have a place to park your horse & buggy! How cool is that? Super nice postal employees at the Smoketown PA Post Office, by the way.
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| Definitely not something you see every day! |
We finished up at the post office and hit the road toward the first covered bridge. We saw some amazing sites as we drove around - even if we did get quite lost and only found two of the five bridges on the tour. Oh, well... seen one covered bridge, seen 'em all. Right?
Part of the covered bridge tour took us to the town of Lititz which, coincidentally, is home to Wilbur Chocolate Factory. I couldn't have planned it any better. We drove through downtown Lititz, found Wilbur's, and went inside for a tour around its museum. Wilbur's is best known for its Wilbur Bud, which is very similar to a Hershey Kiss except the Bud is not individually wrapped and has "Wilbur" embossed on the bottom. Interestingly, the Wilbur Bud was invented in 1894, whereas the better-known Hershey Kiss didn't enter the world until 1907. Just a bit of trivia for you.
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| Wilbur Chocolate Factory in Lititz, PA |
After our tour of Wilbur's we headed back toward Lancaster. As we passed one of the many farmhouses, I spotted a gathering off in the distance and almost drove off of the road again reaching for my camera. I just had to have a picture of it. I could just imagine the group of women sitting around working on a quilt, even though I had no idea what they were doing. I wanted so badly to join them, but Scott insisted I keep driving. Fortunately, since I was the one driving, I found the best place to make a u-turn, handed the camera off to Emilee, and drove back past the gathering. We were a good enough distance away to not be considered rude, right? I had to u-turn four times before we got an acceptable picture, albeit a bit blurry since we had to zoom in quite a bit. I would have gone back past again, but since we were the only car on the road, it was probably obvious what we were doing. :-) I finally continued on and got more fun pictures of the area.
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| Think they'd mind if I joined them? |
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| Amish Schoolhouse |
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| I want one of these for my yard! |
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| Feeding time for the sheep |
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| Seeing this never gets old. |
On our drive back toward Lancaster, we came across the Intercourse Pretzel Factory. We dropped inside and were able to take a tour of where they make the pretzels and even got to shape our own. Those pretzel-makers can twist a rope of dough in the air and turn it into a pretzel... definitely not as easy as it looks, but it was fun trying.
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| In the factory learning to twist a pretzel |
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| Even Daddy got in on the dough twisting action. |
After getting a pretzel treat from the factory, we decided to relax for the rest of the evening so we headed back to the hotel for a little pool time before turning in for the night.
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| Another gorgeous sunset |
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