Today was a travel day. We packed up our stuff and departed from PA Dutch TT, allowing us respite from the daylight hours semi-automatic and shotgun fire in the nearby shooting range. A shooting range next to a camping area with hundreds of spaces would seem to be a foolish zoning arrangement.
We zigzagged through rural Pennsyvania, going vaguely east for the first time on this year’s trip. We reached our furthest penetration east for this year when we drove into Delaware a few days ago and now we start our journey back toward the west coast, hopefully arriving in San Diego around mid-November. We passed through fields with Amish farmers in them, harvesting crops by hand. The farms here were gorgeous. We crossed the Susquehanna River again, this time on old US-30. We passed the Harley factory in York and continued on to Gettysburg Farm TT in East Berlin. Berlin is pronounced BER-lin here instead of ber-LIN like the German city.
It is a nice campground but I arranged our trailer such that I could not get the satellite antenna to work so there won’t be any TV for the next few days. When we were here in 2015, there was no wifi but now it has been installed. Soon, I will know if it works.
There’s pix. Click here

We spent our final full day in Manheim area taking a cruise up to Palmyra, Jonestown and Annville, three tiny towns north of the campground. On our way out we noticed a sign on the adjacent camp space that indicated the names of the tenants was Schittler. We have camped alongside many folks with strange names but the Schittlers and the Succos (2015 Texas) both have names that, were they mine, I would not advertise.
Our drive north initially passed through Jonestown, then Palmyra and finally through Annville. Jonestown and Annville are very small but Palmyra is larger and the home of the Beer Cove, a vendor with a good beer selection. We found some Edmund Fitzgerald porter here but no Deschutes Black Butte which we revere as the best. In 2015, we found a couple cases of Black Butte, made in Oregon, here at the Beer Cove but their selection this year was not as complete.
This part of Pennsylvania has an extraordinary number of buildings from the 18th and 19th Centuries and a good number of them are still in use. Throughout today’s drive we spotted absolutely gorgeous houses, churches and municipal buildings, miles of neighborhoods with brick row houses and balconies, and stunning farms. The farms seem to be mostly operated by Mennonite and Amish families and they are very tidy. It is strange to see folks plowing and harrowing with horses but they seem to think it is okay. They seem like nice folks that live without indoor plumbing, radios, cars, tractors, the internet, electrical devices, deodorant or bars. Travel is by horse-drawn carriage, bike or scooter. The fruits and vegetables in their roadside stands are beautiful and luscious.
On our way back toward our campground, we came across an old facility called Cornwall Furnace. There are some very stout buildings still standing here that were part of the furnace complex which operated, making iron from nearby ore deposits, from 1742 to 1883. The abbatoir here was very pretty, despite the use.
Check out the pictures. Click here

Today the weather finally quit being horrible with morning temperatures in the upper 60s and clear skies. We didn’t do anything interesting. I dumped the waste tanks. We ate at home.
We did notice that there seems to be a gun range not far from our campground and many folks were out killing clay pigeons and paper targets. Initially, we just thought is was locals fooling around with fireworks but nobody has as many as we heard today. We also have neighbors across the road who have a furry little dog that barks incessantly whenever the family leaves. Fortunately, those wonderful neighbors left this evening after making many scraping and clunking noises as they pulled away with their enormous trailer. I hope I don’t run over any of the metal parts ripped from their trailer as they traveled home.
We had barbecued steaks and corn on the cob for dinner. I really like doing this kind of stuff.

There was no official agenda when we awoke this morning and we were in a quandry about what fun stuff we should do. We looked at the map and noticed that we are not camped far from Delaware. Peggy and I have been to all the states except Delaware and North Dakota although we cheated and flew to Hawaii and took a boat to Alaska. All the rest, except the missing two mentioned above, we drove through while on some form of road trip.
We chose to knock Delaware from the list. We left our campground in Manheim and headed southeast on rural roads. Most of the way, we were passing through farm country and small timber thickets owned by either Amish or Mennonite farm families and the scenery was gorgeous. These rolling hills farm scenes look like they are paintings of wonderful bucolic places where big, happy families live and work. I don’t know if they are happy but everyone we saw coming at us in horse-drawn buggies seemed to be smiling and quite content. On the way, we passed through small towns with old masonry buildings, filigreed metal 2nd floor balconies and extremely narrow streets, at least for a Ford F-250. The buggies fit fine.
After about 65 miles, we broke into Delaware, an extremely puny state. We drove in right where Maryland, Pennsylvania and Delaware meet in the very northwest corner of the state and home to White Clay State Park. We didn’t go in because they charge locals one price and interlopers, like us, twice as much so we hung a U-turn in the driveway and consulted the road atlas. We noted that nearby was the Delaware River, a location depicted in a painting of George Washington standing up in a rowboat on his way across the river to kill many British who were all quite drunk due to Xmas celebrations. I can imagine a bunch of soldiers rowing and thinking, “I wish George would sit down because he is rocking the boat.”
In any event, we drove over to the Delaware River at New Castle, another town with old brick masonry buildings. We did note that the orientation of the roads and the horrible, always-red signals bar the way of anyone trying to go anywhere so we decided to try some rural highways. Instead of going upriver toward Philadelphia and New Jersey, we went south downriver a bit past heavy industrial areas and large swampy fetid lagoons. Having decided we had seen enough, we headed west past I-95 and found our way back to Pennsylvania.
We stopped in Gap, PA, to eat at a place called Dutch-way Family Restaurant where the food was not as economical nor as good as Dienner’s a couple days ago. I could tell because by the time I got back to our trailer about an hour later, I was barely able to get to the growler in time.
North Dakota – you’re next.
We took a few pix you can see if you click here

Today we took a cruise east into Lancaster County to dine at a place we have been before – Dienner’s, in Ronks. Ronks is east of Intercourse which I thinks means one thing to the Amish and something else to the rest of us. It serves food that you can order from a menu or one can just sit down to their lunch buffet. The place is run by the Amish and the food is superb. The buffet costs $12 a head at lunch and I got to have a great salad, clam chowder, beef somethings in gravy, a bit of potatoes and some baked limas before slipping up to the dessert counter for stuff I am not supposed to eat. It was terrific.
We finished up at the trough and took a spin through some of Lancaster County. On the way we passed through Manheim, Ronks, Intercourse, Lititz (LA-tits to us but LIT-itz to locals) and some other tiny intersections on our way to check out the gorgeous residential, farm and municipal architecture. The Amish and Mennonite farm families keep extremely tidy farms and their holdings in this county are extensive. They reproduce at prodigious rates and their houses are rambling and massive. They also don’t use powered stuff like cars or trucks so we spotted quite a few locals out riding in their little carriages behind very healthy-looking horses. This place is a strange anachronism.
We also passed some equipment sales and service joints so everyone in the county apparently are not compelled to use horses for horsepower. We saw to farm equipment today that looks like it would turn any unsuspecting idiots into red fodder should they be foolish enough to get tangled up with the working end. Based on some of the driving we saw today, it would seem that plenty of folks around here are strangers to thinking, slashing their way home with cell phone in hand.
There are some photos of this back country gorgeousness. Click here

Today was a travel day so we loaded up our stuff and skedaddled out of the Candy Lane RV Park near Winchester, VA, headed northwest. Candy Lane was a very nice park with good roads, good wifi, cable TV, good satellite reception and full hookups but I think we may have been there at the wrong time of year. It is hotter than hell and the oppressive humidity makes any kind of outdoor activity damp. A T-shirt is good for about 10 minutes outdoors before sagging towards the earth. I noted some funny smells and I think it was the operator.
Because of the strange orientation of states, we left the park in Virginia but in less than a quarter hour we were entering West Virginia. Perhaps 20 minutes later, we passed into Maryland for a short drive before entering Pennsylvania. Four states in 45 minutes. Not long after entering Pennsylvania, we crossed the Susquehanna River where we could glance to the east and see Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station, home to a March 1979 radioactive cloud release that allegedly hurt either nobody or a whole generation of people that were living downwind. We didn’t see any purple gas coming out today so I guess we are okay.
About an hour or so after entering the state, we turned onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike, a toll road. We stopped at the proper tollbooth, got a chit indicating where we got onto the road and proceeded easterly. On the chit was a table that users reference to ascertain their toll before getting to the tollbooth where they are exiting. Based on how the tollbooth attendant saw our vehicle, we determined we would be obliged to pay either $3.05 or $6.85 when we got off the Pike in Manheim. The toll guy charged us $5.05.
Not a mile from our exit we turned into the PA Dutch Resort owned by Thousand Trails. In this campground we pay nothing because we are members. There are full hookups but no wifi and no antenna, cable or satellite TV reception. Fortunately, we have a big library of movies and TV shows. It seems a little cooler here than where we were this morning.

Today we ventured out into the terrible heat to go shopping. The temperature seemed like it was in the low thousands and the humidity was lingering around 85% when we headed up the road to a local ScabMart. We got out for less than $200.
Not long after we got back to the air conditioned Nirvana of our trailer, the weather went from bad to worse because a vigorous thunderstorm passed over us and it was open for business. The storms here are spectacular with abundant lightning, a couple inches an hour precipitation, some big hail chunks and ear-splitting thunder. It is easy to see how folks here get flooded out because our campsite went from a nice park with lots of grass into a shallow lake in about 25 minutes. The wind or lightning zapped a nearby tree and right after the storm the staff got to work with chainsaws. Very exciting.
In the evening the locals demonstrated that fireworks are legal in Virginia, celebrating the 4th in style at least when they are not being electrocuted by the weather.
See pix. Click here

We went on a cruise through history today. Our first destination was Harper’s Ferry. Harper’s Ferry has a ton of history but most of it was during the Civil War. A fervent abolitionist from New England named John Brown tried to attack and seize the U.S. Army armory in 1859 in an attempt to start a slave revolt. John only had 22 people with him and they were crushed by Marines under the command of Robert E. Lee. Not too much later, Brown did a rope tango in Sharpsburg. Harper’s Ferry is also located at the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers and is a rail hub. These distinctions made Harper’s Ferry a strategic hotbed during the Civil War and that resulted in not less than 11 changes of possession between the Confederacy and the Union between 1861 and 1865.
The town itself lies in a gorge between massive basalt cliffs. There are a bunch of gorgeous Civil War era buildings here, most of them built on the steep hillsides above the rivers. The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal also passed through town, further contributing to its transportation hub status. Unfortunately, it also attracted massive armies to fight over the town. Not five miles away is the Antietam battlefield and Antietam Military Park. Robert E. Lee, James Longstreet, Daniel Hill, Ambrose Hill and Stonewall Jackson led the Confederacy’s forces and George McClellan, Joseph Hooker, Joe Mansfield, Edwin Summer and Ambrose Burnside led the Union’s at Antietam. It was a very nasty fight on September 17, 1862, and 23,000 of the 100,000 folks who showed up for the party didn’t leave because they were either vaporized, were missing parts or were dead. The Union was left on the field at the end while the Confederacy withdrew to the nearby town of Sharpsburg. It must have been a terrible shitstorm. Photos in the park visitor center show the dead arranged like railroad ties where they were killed. The Bloody Lane here, for instance, was a small depression in the morning but a big mass grave by evening.
Nevertheless, Harper’s Ferry is a gorgeous little town and the Antietam battlefield is very pretty when it isn’t covered with blood.
We got a few photos along the way. Click here

The torrid temperatures today were even more crushing than yesterday but we went roaming around anyway. It is fortunate that our truck has very effective air conditioning and we rarely strayed from nor lowered the windows of the comfy cab. To start our drive today, we popped over to Front Royal about 20 minutes away and pulled in at the Knotty Pine Cafe. We ate here in 2015 when we passed through this part of the country and the food is still good. They also have an old milk shake machine that has three propellers so they can make 3 shakes at once. I think the machine is older than me but it still works well, at least it did on my shake.
About $22 later, we were on a quest to find a rural road we had driven before (in 2015) but we were challenged by using my memory for recollection so it took us a while to find it. We both remembered the beginning of the road once we were on it but Virginia roads can be circuitous and we ended up emerging from our exploration in a different place than we did last time. Once back on a main highway, we drove into Sperryville, checked out some of the local architecture and then continued over the north end of the Blue Ridge and back down into the Shenandoah Valley.
In general, the Shenandoah Valley is bordered by the Appalachians on the west and the Blue Ridge on the east but right in the middle of the north end of the valley is a big ridge called the Massanutten that divides the valley into east and west sides. We drove up and over the Massanutten and ultimately came out in Woodstock. We turned north on US-11 through Strasburg, Middletown, and Stevens City where there is an amazing collection of architecture of houses and churches. This part of the world is lousy with churches so all the folks who act like assholes for six days a week can repent without conviction on the seventh. They also had big plantations here and the owners had tip-top houses although it is doubtful the help had housing that was so spiffy. One of the places we stopped was a plantation where there were some sweltering archaeologists digging us relics.
The structures run the gamut from log and heavy timber construction to intricate brick and ashlar masonry and wood buildings with nifty Victorian filigree. A lot of the roof membranes appear to be hammered lead sheets that will rarely leak but folks are discouraged from drinking from the cisterns unless they want to go to church more. The building types in this region offer building buffs a rare look at 350 years of building type evolution. I am surprised at how many ancient buildings are still standing although we spotted some that have collapsed and the kudzu is going to get them or already has. Despite a few decrepit old buildings, this part of the world is very beautiful, at least from inside an air conditioned space.
There’s pix. Click here

We arose this morning to warm temperatures that gradually progressed to hellish, furnace-like temperatures accompanied by stifling humidity. Just going outside and walking once around the trailer would produce a wet shirt and a faint odor.
Therefore, we took it easy and huddled in the comfortable temperatures of our trailer until evening. The temperature by then had dropped back into the high 80’s so we (meaning mostly Peggy) did the laundry. Even the laundry room is air conditioned here.
Fortunately, the wifi is great here so we put some Amazon Prime programming on to keep our minds static until conditions are not so horrible outside. It was more than 80 degrees at 15 minutes till midnight.