Pennsylvania

Monday 7/14/08 thru Wednesday 7/16/08
Today we drove to the Philadelphia/Lancaster area of Pennsylvania. We found gas to be very expensive in NY State, over $5 a gallon. We went over the border into PA and it dropped again. We were driving to a campsite where we had no reservations. We had found it in the AAA book or online. We were following the instructions of our GPS which started taking us on all these little roads. We knew we were going to a small town but it seemed we were in a residential area. We followed each step and as we arrived at the address it was definitely not an RV Park. This was the tightest spot we have been in yet and we were a little concerned about getting out. We turned to the GPS again and found another campsite. We were traveling all over these little country roads following the instructions but not feeling too confident. Finally a local came to our rescue and showed us the way to the camp.
We got a spot and set up camp. After having a quick dinner, we decided to look around the area so we would know what we were doing tomorrow. We were given a local map of all the Amish things in the area. Well, the map was not to scale and things that on the map were right next to each other were miles apart. We kept getting turned around and having to make u-turns. It was getting dark and we weren’t making much headway but at least we knew what road we wanted so we turned around and went back to the campsite.
In the morning, we took off to visit the Amish country. It didn’t take too long before we were seeing horse drawn buggies filled with children. It looked to us like they were going to school. We drove to Strasburg and took a ride on the Strasburg Railroad. It was a 45 minute ride through Amish country. From there, we drove to Intercourse, PA. This city has developed into a tourist area for Amish goods. We walked around through the shops for awhile. We even took a buggy ride ourselves. The ride took us through the countryside and through an Amish farm where we bought some lemonade and pretzels from an Amish girl.
On Wednesday we went to Philadelphia to do some sightseeing thru the Philadelphia and Independence National Historical Park. We saw the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, Carpenter’s Hall, Franklin Court, Christ Church, Betsy Ross House and the Congress Hall. We saw a lot of history packed in about three hours time. We rushed out of Philly to go to Morristown, NJ to visit our friend Dave Scott. On the way there I got pulled over by the NJ State Police for driving too long in the left lane of the Turnpike. I was told that I could only be in the left lane long enough to pass and then I had to move back to the center lane to let other pass me. Even though I pleaded ignorance to that law he still gave me a ticket. I believe he was just picking on out of state drivers because I noticed that no one else was following that particular law. That kind of ruined the afternoon trip but we still had a good time with Dave.