Bird-in-Hand, PA, was our destination today. Peggy had driving duty and I was directed into the navigator’s seat on the right side of Charlotte. I remembered a diesel station location on what I was convinced was the road to Bird-in-Hand so I sent Peg driving down the highway to the pumps. At my direction, we continued down the road after parting with many dollars to fill Charlotte’s tank only to discover that my recollection was entirely faulty so we soon arrived in Lancaster, PA. This was not my intended destination but I lied and indicated we were on the correct highway although it required we only drive some extra miles to reach our goal.
Ultimately we made it to Bird-in-Hand which is an Amish or Mennonite community that sells products to the curious, ignorant tourists. We started out at the Bird-in-Hand Farmer’s Market which is really a terrific place to buy food. They had tons of fudge, meat, pretzels, sweet rolls and other tasty stuff, some of which we bought in an attempt to clog our arteries. Despite the Pennsylvania Dutch reputation for a boring existence, the food they make is very yummy and we were required to leave the market before we bought everything they had for sale.
Peggy then had us visit a quilting store which, surprisingly, was even interesting to me. These folks must have a lot of time on their hands because they have time to make extremely intricate quilts that I found attractive. The designs are traditional but the variety and colors used in the individual quilts is pretty fascinating which I cannot believe I am writing because normally this kind of stuff is boring to me. Not in this case. Peggy demonstrated remarkable restraint by only buying $19 worth of quilt stuff in this place.
We drove home on a route we had not traveled before which is pretty easy around here considering the poor quality of the maps we have. Travel tip: Never rely on maps which you have acquired at tourist areas and instead use those provided by the state visitor information center because they are nearly accurate. It is interesting to note that we ended up passing by a long covered bridge today that we had not found in our search for them recently. Pennsylvania is a remarkable environment for coincidence.
Peggy’s baby dove is still alive but he has firmed up his new residence in the absent neighbor’s firepit. Mom and Dad Dove are dutifully feeding the little guy despite him being about the same size as his folks.

Today’s agenda was completely blank so we sat around the Invader relaxing and loafing and worse. We waited until it cooled down from today’s high of about 90 and then went on a walk about the campground. It is a very nice camping place with a couple ponds and a small lake, a big activity center with an indoor hot tub (which they strangely refer to as a “spa”), large expanses of well-trimmed grass, lots of geese and goslings, some ducks with tiny baby ducks, a big variety of other birds along with the normal number of squirrels, chipmunks, some turtles and a few Cessna-sized insects.
As we strolled about, we noted that some of the young birds that were in nests yesterday morning had been evicted by yesterday’s thunderstorms and associated downpours. Peggy took a liking to one particular victim, a dove baby that had moved from his previous quarters to a cozy spot on top of our fire ring grate right outside the Invader. Peggy decided this little gray fluffball was in danger of croaking so she decided to get closer to it to see if she could save this doomed noisemaker from certain death by neglect. It was soon discovered that the chick was not quite as neglected as it might seem because the mother (we think) arrived as Peg was approaching and started a spirited defense of the young one by pecking it’s head. Through this motivational system, the mother was able to drive the chick from our fire grate to the neighbor’s water spigot a bit further from our trailer.
Peggy soon began to fret about the youngster and initiated a lifesaving strategy of chasing it around the campground in a vain attempt to feed the possibly starving chick. This technique had extremely limited success. Next, Peg got on the phone to cruise the net about what dove moms feed little doves and found that they feed them crop milk which further research revealed was regurgitated food. Peggy drew the line at eating bird seed and ralphing it back up for distressed birds so more research revealed that if one is tempted to feed displaced young birds boiled egg, bread and water could be mixed to substitute for bird puke.
Additional research found that, if one was so inclined, the fate of doomed young birds could be arranged such that humans would feel better about complete helplessness regarding soon-to-be-dead tiny birds. Info from the internet indicated that baby birds could be captured and placed in a small box lined with tissue and the bird and box could be placed in a tree and fed by the dove folks. I was engaged to make a couple of small boxes, one for the baby bird and a smaller one for the bird puke substitute.
There was a little problem with the info from the net. They neglected to note that even little baby dove chicks can get around through the mechanism of flight and running, both of them faster than the capabilities of the pursuer. Missus Surrogate Squab made a few daring lunges at the infant bird without success. Fortunately, Mama Dove was able to easily find her wayward chick, probably by following Peggy around our nice campsite. Considerably more head pecking ensued but eventually Ma and Pa Dove resumed feeding their youngster despite his having moved out of the family digs and taken up residence on the absent neighbor’s fire ring grate. Peggy seemed entirely satisfied with the new arrangement with the exception that she believed the little guy would freeze to death at night on the grate, despite it being quite warm at night. Ma and Pa Dove do not seem to be offended by Junior’s new quarters although the they may not think it is quite as spiffy if the absent neighbor returns and lights a fire.

Today we went to Hershey, PA, where we soon found that this is the birthplace and manufacturing center of Hershey’s chocolate. They have a World of Hershey which is a museum about the guy who started the business and founded the town along with Hershey’s Chocolate World which is an enormous store to buy anything Hershey (or Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups) in addition to some droll rides you can take if you want to see all the Hershey city sights or the chocolate factory. Right next door is Hersheypark which is a theme park for those who love chocolate and roller coaster rides that induce the recently eaten chocolate to come back up so you can buy more.
We passed on the museum and Hersheypark and popped into Hershey’s Chocolate World. The place was mobbed with prospective chocolate buyers who were only outnumbered by the chocolate buyers. I noted that some of the folks had shopping baskets and carts that were filled with a variety of chocolate and chocolate-covered peanut butter items that they had lined up to purchase. They all were going to be required to ultimately depart from the gaudy air-conditioned environs of this chocolate Mecca to re-emerge into the quite warm and humid outside environment where all of the recently purchased items could melt into a gooey puddle in their broiling hot cars. Doctors that treat diabetics and dentists that drill away decayed teeth should all contribute liberally to this chocolate monster since this place seems plainly to be a substantial source of their inflated incomes
We escaped with only two big chocolate bars, a killer size box of Whoppers and only two chocolate cookies with chocolate chips. I suppose shortly after departure my blood sugar had a spike that would have been suitable for killing vampires as they sleep. Although quite tasty, these items are probably inherently bad for most people which I ignored as I slam-dunked one of the cookies down the grocery hole. Damn, they are tasty.
We drove about a little in Hershey which seems to have a big variety of really gorgeous residential and commercial buildings, primarily made from brick masonry although some are stone and a few are wood. We wandered up a side road from the chocolate epicenter and soon found the Antique Automobile Museum which is associated with the Smithsonian. There are not a tremendous number of cars here but all of the rigs spread over three floors are unique. They have many classics which are one-of-a-kind because back in the day auto manufacturers were mostly guys putting machines together in their garages. They have a nice selection of 1906 to 1910 Fords, not less than 3 Tuckers and quite a few types of cars that I have not heard of previously. They also have a big selection of motor scooters like CZs, Cushman and Vespa-type scooters with names that I could not recognize. This is a great place for car buffs but if you are going here, go to Chocolate World afterward to keep your chocolate from congealing into a misshapen gob after you depart.
From the auto museum we drove around the countryside on our way back to the Invader and we happened to pass through Lebanon, PA. Lebanon must be the slums for the underpaid workers that make chocolate or nothing because it was pretty rough-looking. Lots of run-down buildings with scrawny slum dwellers lurking on the porches was the main view from Hwy 72 which runs through the middle of town. I suggested to Peg that she not do a lot of side road exploring in this part of the world so we headed back toward the Invader. On the way, we noted the sky was turning an ominous shade of dark gray so we turned on the radio and almost instantly found a station that had Emergency Broadcast System announcements indicating we were about to experience some severe thunderstorms and possible tornadoes. We hustled back down Hwy 322 to our campsite so we could be sucked into the sky while in our trailer instead of being sucked into the sky in our pickup truck. It turned out that no tornado developed but the thunderstorm certainly did. We spotted a little lightning before hearing some very impressive thunder which immediately preceded a torrential downpour. All the fun was over in about two hours but everything in this part of PA is no longer thirsty.

Aaahh, the benefits of Garmin wayfinding. Our mission today was to find some of the covered bridges in the area to the east of where we are camping. Strangely, the only information we were able to Google was a description of local specimens with their corresponding GPS coordinates. Our Garmin had a feature that could be selected which would display the GPS coordinates where we were located which is almost completely useless since we already knew where we were. I had already scrolled through the various other functions of the Garmin which did not seem to allow the operator to enter the GPS coordinates of where the operator might want to go but I was unable to find any such feature and I told Peggy that this function was not available on this device.
Peggy fettled with the idiot-confusing device for about 15 seconds and promptly found the function which would allow ignorant mudheads like me to enter GPS coordinates of where I may want to go. We set off using the Garmin only to tell us where we were and drove a very circuitous route to the first bridge which only required about 20 miles of wandering down unfamiliar side roads to cover the 7 miles to the first covered bridge.
The first bridge was quite nice. It is called Hunsecker’s Mill Covered Bridge and is a beautiful structure some 180 feet long and we drove across it noting that the sign ahead of the bridge indicated a maximum load of 3 tons on the bridge deck. I ran a quick calculation in my head and determined to my own satisfaction that Charlotte and her passengers were well within the weight limit.
We set off for our next target, Pinetown Covered Bridge, using our newly-discovered Garmin capability to direct us to the correct location. Perhaps we are not as bright as we tell ourselves because the Garmin’s nice female voice directed us to what seemed to be the proximity of the proposed second stop on our tour of discovery before the voice started directing us to “turn right” directly across some Amish farmer’s very beautiful, verdant but roadless corn field to get to the alleged bridge location. We were reluctant to drive across the farmer’s very well maintained farm property so we pulled up to a local Mennonite church and tried to enter the GPS coordinates of the third target for today’s tour of discovery. The sweet voice from the Garmin suggested we turn left from our rest stop and “continue on route.” We were taken right back to where we had refused to cross the tidy cornfield for target #2. Perhaps we were not using the device correctly.
We tried entering the coordinates for target #4 using a seemingly improved data entry system and the nice voice directed us down the highway to what seemed initially like where we were convinced we wanted to go. Maybe the Garmin determines that you want to get to a programmed set of GPS coordinates by the quickest available route, disregarding the pesky requirement of roads because we were soon at another location where we had the option of not seeing the bridge or possibly seeing the bridge after a substantial off-road experience in America’s beautiful farm country.
If I had not discarded the Garmin’s use instructions with the packing crate, I may have been able read them and to trick the device into taking us to the location of choice using roads suitable for vehicular traffic. Regrettably, this was not the case so we were stumped. It was at this point in time that I embarked on a revised mission to find covered bridges by driving to Lancaster, PA, the county seat, and to go to the visitor information center to get a viable map with directions to the very scenic bridges which could be followed by Garmin-challenged travelers, like me. This only required that we back-track through quite a bit of the very same territory where we had programmed our device to mislead us in the first place. After some more driving through now-familiar territory, we arrived at the Lancaster visitor information center where we were able to get maps and descriptions of how to get to these possibly gorgeous but elusive attractions. Our efforts paid off because we were able to find what we were looking for almost without confusion.
We arrived first at Erb’s Bridge which also had a 3 ton weight limit and drove across the one-lane spectacle. I noted quite a bit of creaking as we slowly moved across the span and it was only after we emerged from the nice wooden covered structure that I recalculated the known weight of Charlotte and passengers and the calculation went like this:
8050 pounds divided by 2000 pounds = 4+ tons
I believe I had discovered the cause of Erb’s creaking and groaning noises as we passed over the bridge and I also believe that I can truthfully tell the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation that the weight limit for this structure may be set artificially low if creaking, groaning or collapse does not bother them.
Our recently discovered method for finding covered bridges was now in full play and we were able to visit two or three more bridges (without testing them for load-carrying capabilities) almost without getting lost. After the minimally successful mission to see covered bridges we decided to go to the town of Lititz, which I pronounce “la tits” but the locals pronounce as “lit itz,” where we found a restaurant / tavern called Jojo’s (I think) located right in the center if town. We ordered a barbecue plate for two ($42) which had cornbread muffins, pulled pork, a half rack of ribs, pulled chicken and a pile of brisket along with four sides which turned out to be cole slaw, baked beans, fries and zucchini, one of Peg’s faves. The food was great and we chased it down with a glass of porter each. After tip, we had escaped from the place only $64 poorer but we had quite a bit of lunch with us in boxes as we departed.

Unfortunately, today was a day when we noticed we were getting pretty short on clean, suitable attire so we spent a good part of the morning doing the laundry. Maybe I should say Peg did most of the laundry and I periodically hindered her by helping to do the wash. I am an extremely poor laundry guy and am completely retarded when it comes to folding clothes such that they will look acceptable once you put them on. T-shirts seem to be particularly challenging for me. Many times I have put on T-shirts I have folded that look like I merely removed them from the dryer and promptly rolled them into a ball before they had a chance to cool. I am extremely fortunate to have my wife along on laundry days because otherwise I would look like even more of a slob.
After finishing this onerous task, we decided to take a drive east through what is entitled “Pennsylvania Dutch” country which actually means Amish and Mennonite communities because absolutely nobody speaks Dutch around here. However, they do speak a variety of Germanic dialects which we didn’t hear because we only spoke to a couple of people, both of them in produce stands.
The farming country where these folks live is absolutely the most tidy farming operations I have ever seen. The locals drive around on the highways with buggies drawn by gorgeous horses happily ignoring those of us affected by the Industrial Revolution. The Amish and Mennonites deliberately live in communities where they can sort of ignore the outside world and just do what they see as correct. They have big families, live in big houses because they have loads of kids, drive to town in buggies disdaining automobiles, mostly do their farming without engines, do not fight in wars because it is contrary to their beliefs and generally tell the rest of the world to F.O. although they probably say it in a nice German religious manner. The graveyards have stones indicating these folks have been doing things their way in their communities for about 150 years without bothering to recognize the outside world. I like the idea of large groups of people choosing exactly what they are going to do without letting modern influences irritate or even affect their lives. I think we will probably do another random tour through this part of the state just to giggle at these people who do not give even a fraction of a shit about what I or any other outsiders think. They also have great food in their one-of-a-kind restaurants and I want to pig out on more of it.

Peg started the day by sending an electronic message to our daughter Dana wishing her happy birthday. Peg sent the message at 6:00 AM local time. I hope the ring on Dana’s end didn’t wake her up since she is in the west where the local time was 3:00 AM.
We ended our time in Gettysburg Resort (which is actually not very close to Gettysburg) and drove about an hour to Hershey TT Resort which is not really very close to Hershey, PA. The park is actually about 15 miles east of Hershey near Annville, PA. Despite the park not being in Hershey, it is a very nice park with all the amenities you could ask for in an RV park – pool, hot tub, two laundries, two ponds, tons of birds and lots of geese with their broods of young ones dutifully waddling along behind Mom and Dad. Most all of the site have full hookups (water, power, sewer) and the flora in the park is beautiful. The whole area is pretty scenic with rolling farm country interspersed with dense hardwood forest.
Since we had such a short drive to get here, we were set up early in the day and had ample time for exploring. We started our explorations by driving to a town called Palmyra where we found a beer distributor that advertised 200+ types of malt products available called the Beer Cove. They had an adequate selection of porter products which Peg and I have decided is the best stuff for us. We left with two cases, one of Deschutes Black Butte and another called Edmund Fitzgerald which are both terrific beverages.
Not having been able to actually drink in the Beer Cove, we went to another place which was advertised in the handout they give you whenever you check into a TT park, namely a bar called Funck’s. They advertise that they have 56 beers on tap so we were able to ask the barkeep to give us an eight-glass flight of porter. Unfortunately for us, none of the products we sampled was as good as the products lurking in the back seat of Charlotte although the drinking was good. We left Palmyra hoping we didn’t get stopped for any quizzes by the local cops and made it back to the Hershey park before dark.

Today’s excursion was to the city of York, PA. I had never really thought about it but York was a monster in the manufacture of goods. York air conditioners, Harley-Davidson motorcycles, Aeronca aircraft, automobiles, farm equipment and a flurry of other stuff was all fabricated in York during the heady factory days a bit earlier in our history, namely when smokestack industry ruled the economy. Harleys are still made in York.
To commemorate this heritage, York has a terrific Industry Museum that has all the stuff ever made in town all in one big building. It is a terrific place for people like me that enjoy museums with mechanical stuff in them. Quite a bit of the stuff still works and they also have a three-story high working grist mill which they can turn on if you ask. It is powered by an enormous overshot water wheel which turns a series of gears which clank and clunk happily as the mill starts the grinding stones to working. All the components for the mill were made in York, although it was a long time ago since water wheel grist mills went out of vogue about 100 years ago.
We found out that our $13 fee to enter the museum also gave us access to the other museums in York so we reluctantly left the Industry Museum and drove about ½ a mile to the York Archives which had a town square with a log cabin, an apothecary shop, a millinery (woman’s hat) shop, an early machine shop and a room dedicated to one of the museum patrons. They also had a bunch of pictures drawn by a guy named Louis Miller who scribbled them down when anything happened in York about 100 years ago. There is a great collection of tall case clocks and a pretty good exhibit about York’s history during the Civil War. It seems that the mayor of York made a deal with the Confederates so they wouldn’t destroy his town which worked out well for York but didn’t do the Union Army much good.
We drove around in York’s downtown area which has great masonry architecture but the town is getting pretty old and a lot of the buildings are now part of a miserable ghetto. The street paving is doo-doo and they are very narrow, particularly if you are driving an enormous Ford pickup truck through town. The back wheels ran over more than one curb at the skinny intersections. If there is an upscale part of York, we didn’t go through it.

We started the day way too early for us retired types by taking Charlotte to the local Ford dealership at 7:30 in the morning for an oil change, a change-out of the fuel filters and a new air cleaner. The guys in the dealership here in East Berlin must be a lot more savvy than the clods we had perform the work in Tallahassee a few months back because these guys did the oil and filter changes in about an hour and twenty minutes while the experts in the big dealership in Tallahassee did an oil change only in 3 hours and we had to arrive at 6:30 to get it done that fast.
After parting with $330 for the work, we adjourned to Emig’s for breakfast which was great for me but not so terrific for Peg. I got usual breakfast fare but Peg decided to go with the chicken pot pie special which had quite a bit of the pie but very little chicken. She said it tasted okay but pot pie with substantially more crust than filling resulted in her leaving quite a bit of the meal on the plate after we were done. Bummer.
We left Emig’s with half of us perfectly satisfied and cruised around the countryside east of East Berlin which seems to be mostly farmland with very tidy farms. After a bit of this form of entertainment, we drove into the bustling metropolis of Abbottstown, population maybe 3000, where we went into a Wal-Mart to stock up on groceries. Wal-Mart is world famous for the strange folks you may encounter inside and this one was no exception. In this case, the strangest person we encountered was the cashier who seemed to be handicapped at checking since she would give each of our 50 items a good, long look before passing the item over the laser reader, always in such a way that the reader could not detect the price. After some more staring at the item while slowly turning it over in her hands she would give it another pass and some of the time the reader could see the tag and allow the item to be bagged. She seemed to believe that each item required it’s own bag so we ended up with not too many items but a shitload of bags. This was enough excitement for us for the day so we took our ample supply of bags back to the Invader where we celebrated by drinking some of our favorite beverages – porter and whiskey.

Hopped into Charlotte and drove over to Gettysburg to check out the battlefield complex. We headed from E. Berlin to Abbottstown and then west to Gettysburg.
Gettysburg National Military Park has a great visitor center and a great self-guided auto tour. The tour costs nothing but the movie, the cyclorama (a big 360 degree panorama painting) and access to the museum costs $12.50 a head if you are not 62 or a AAA member. I think that the entrance fee was pretty reasonable because the museum and other stuff is very well done. The museum has exhibits even idiots like me can understand that clearly explain the chronology of the battle from the perspective of both the Union and the Confederacy, shows the type of stuff issued to the soldiers and officers, describes all the players and the parts they played and describes the aftermath of the battle for the locals.
After the museum, we took the auto tour which plainly demonstrates where each Confederate and Union unit was during the 3 day battle here. In 3 days, 51,000 casualties occurred from both sides with the Union being declared the winner although each side lost about a fourth of their complement here. It was a mess, particularly for the civilian residents who were obliged to clean up the dead horses, dead men and destroyed equipment starting 3 days after the battles ended. Must have smelled funky. Pictures taken during this period show puffed-up corpses about to split their duds so I imagine the clean up crew was real careful tossing these balloons into mass graves. Unfortunately, unseasonable rains floated a lot of the dead from their too-shallow graves. Yuk!
We took a spin through the town of Gettysburg which is a gorgeous place with beautiful masonry houses and churches. The places in town are small but the architecture is beautiful. Just driving through town is a sightseeing extravaganza.
We returned through Abbottstown where we slipped into a restaurant called Emig’s 81 just east of town. It is a little local diner with great food at a very reasonable price. I got fried chicken livers, sausage and potato soup, fried corn fritters, apple crescents and ice tea while Peg selected a cheeseburger, chicken and corn soup and iced tea. We both had pie for dessert and the total bill was less than $30. If we get near this place again, we will be heading in for another session at the trough.

We departed Front Royal, VA, headed for Gettysburg, PA. We started out going north on Hwy 340 and followed it through West Virginia and Maryland before entering Pennsylvania. On 340 you get to pass through 4 states in less than 60 miles and somewhere along the way we got off on Hwy 15, then 30 and ultimately turned on 194 to our campground called Gettysburg Farm which is actually some distance from Gettysburg in East Berlin, PA. Not the East Berlin in Germany. This East Berlin has no big wall but lots of the businesses around here have names that sound Dutch or German although, as far as we can tell, they speak English.
Shortly after we arrived and got the Invader set up, we decided to take a little spin around the area. This may not have been the best time since almost before we left the park it started raining and it was definitely open for business. The edges of all the roads we drove on were flooded at the edge and some sections had red / brown rivers of recently plowed soil running through the road. Charlotte would be covered with muddy goo driving through the red glop and almost immediately get all squeaky clean about two minutes later from the torrential rain. We kept our exploration fairly short and went back to the Invader for porter and whiskey because either it was too nasty for driving or we were thirsty. You choose.