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.

Our agenda for today was unencumbered by appointments or forethought so we started the day by cogitating over coffee. We realized or remembered that our campground reservations for the future month or so were fragmented such that we had some immediate and some far-in-the-future reservations but there were gaping holes in between.
Of course, we started attacking the problem and quickly realized that we had again foolishly selected a Sunday for this task. Nobody in the campground business answers phones on Sundays and many of the Thousand Trails reservation websites are mystifying to operate properly, particularly for your narrator – a complete Luddite. We are Elite Members of TT (which means we paid a lot for the membership) but the websites seemingly derive some kind of cyber ecstasy from torturing recently impoverished members by cleverly arranging the site so it will automatically send you to all the features of the site except the one you need.
We had some partial success but there is still some work needed to firm up our accommodations schedule. In the midst of today’s mindless wanderings through electronic reservation systems, the weather put on an extravaganza. It was a bright clear morning. By 10:00, there were a few wispy clouds. By about 1:00, we noted it was getting noticeably darker outside and by 2:00 there was some preliminary thunder grumbles before the sky opened up and shat upon us. The wind went from about 5 mph to about 60 mph in 3 minutes during the heaviest squall lines of vision-obscuring rain mixed with a bit of small hail. The entire thunderstorm was here and gone in about 15 minutes. The weather here can be impressive, especially to those of us from drought-plagued states. After I ignorantly convinced myself the trailer wouldn’t fly away (it weighs six tons) it was great to watch.
It is our last day in Virginia on this trip. Although their interstate highways are…uhhh…interesting, the rest of Virginia has been just exceptional. While we were here this spring, we have encountered historical sites from 1607 through the Revolutionary and Civil Wars and seemingly coming right up to about the 1930s. The people we have met have been very hospitable and friendly. The rural areas from the coast all the way to the Appalachians have breathtaking scenery much of which can be easily seen from paved roads. The weather has been interesting since I am from California where there is no weather. Weather here changes quickly compared to the location of my residence in San Diego; the effect of two or three completely different types of weather on the same day is fascinating. I will miss this place until I return.

The task of the day today was to visit Shenandoah Caverns near Mt. Jackson, VA, so we left Front Royal on I-66 west until we turned onto I-81 south to the Caverns. I initially thought I may have been premature condemning all the interstate highways as substandard in Virginia but we merely needed to travel far enough to ascertain that I-81 also has a rotten road surface. Nevertheless, it was not crowded and we were able to pass about 30 miles down the road without concerns other than avoiding road hazards like potholes and faults running down the center of the lanes.
The Caverns cost $23 a head which doesn’t seem too bad until you remember that Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico costs $10 for 3 days of access. You start the exploration by dropping about 70 feet into the caverns by a medieval elevator with a capacity of about 7 people without getting too cozy. The tours consist of about 25 people so it takes some standing around until they are able to deliver a full complement of folks to the tour start point. Once everybody made it to the start point, we were greeted by Olivia, our guide. She was nice enough but had one of those voices that makes you want to ignore her so I didn’t quite catch all the info she was trying to give. Nevertheless, the tour takes you through several different areas or rooms of the Caverns which are very interesting but all of them with plainly visible lighting fixtures & Romex electrical conductors which detracts from the experience. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that Romex is not rated for exposure to the environment and their lighting system was, therefore, not code-compliant if Virginia has adopted the National Electrical Code.
The Caverns tour is pretty short. If we didn’t have to wait on dawdlers and gimps, like me, the whole thing could have been wrapped up in about 25 minutes. It is all very pretty – I was just expecting a bit more.
From the Caverns, we drove east on Hwy 211 across the section of the Shenandoah Valley west of the Massanutten. As we ascended the Massanutten we ran into a highly localized thundershower that gave Charlotte’s wipers a run for their money, overwhelming them for short sections such that the road became almost invisible. We drove through the shower at about 20 mph until we emerged on the other side of it into clear weather. Weird.
The Massanutten is heavily timbered with hardwood trees, all of them just as happy and green as could be. We climbed through a pass at about 2200 feet still going east and then descended into the portion of the Shenandoah Valley that runs east of the Massanutten. We ultimately arrived in Sperryville, which is a neat little place with nice old houses mostly made from brick or stone masonry although we did spot some wood buildings which were also old and nice and quite tidy.
Departing bustling Sperryville, we headed north on Hwy 522 which is not a Virginia interstate highway and, therefore, perfectly sound with wide lanes, wide shoulders, clear lane and fog-line markings and exceptional paving. Partway back to our campsite, we randomly turned right onto Long Mountain Road which was a single-lane farm road running east and we decided to see how far we could go on it. Initially, there was simple but adequate paving which got a bit slimmer as we continued. Soon enough, the paving quit in favor of a well-graded gravel road but we continued because the scenery was so terrific. There are well-maintained farms (I guess – in the west we would call them ranches because there are no crops other than grass) with very healthy-looking livestock, predominately cows and horses. The farms are separated by wide clumps of hardwood forest. The now-gravel road continued and we did run by some muddy and potholed sections and some inclines with drainage gulleys that wandered freely from the ditch but, as a whole, the road was perfectly adequate for Charlotte’s enormous size. Charlotte is a 4 ton 2 wheel drive king-cab Ford F-250 turbo-diesel pickup truck that is only about 22 feet long.
We were probably about 4 miles onto the gravel when we encountered a Virginia plaster contractor stopped in the middle of the dirt road in a forested section due to a broken trailer hitch that had inconveniently separated his pickup truck from his plaster mixer. We sneaked between his road-clogging problem and the ditch and pulled up to ask if he needed assistance and to quiz him on the road ahead. He declined our assistance and happily explained that the road did indeed continue and we could make a big circle back to the highway if we merely followed his directions. I had my doubts about my ability to follow them but we foolishly continued down the road. As we moseyed toward someplace we encountered a bunny calmly eating in the road and reluctant to move and also a snake (which I probably erroneously identify as an eastern king snake) calmly sunning himself in the middle of the road. As we approached, first the snake looked like a mirage. As we got closer it looked more like a dead black snake. Once I put Charlotte’s enormous front paw next to the snake, he turned to look at the offending tire. He wasn’t dead.
We snapped a few pix of him while we could before he did a leisurely squiggle and disappeared under the truck. We didn’t want to get out and we didn’t want to squish him so we put Charlotte in park and gave each other stupid looks. After a bit, the snake came out the passenger side and continued into the roadside grass. We put Charlotte back in D and continued on until we found out we had not been as dumb as we thought and came back out at Hwy 22 albeit in a different place than where we went in.
After re-emerging from our little back country expedition, we diverted from our suspiciously empty agenda and skulked down a few other little side roads in search of nothing in particular, which we found in abundance if you exclude gorgeous countryside. We finally made it home to the Barbarian Invader.

Hubba-hubba! Today we hopped in Charlotte the truck and cruised up onto the Skyline Drive which is the road that runs on top of the Blue Ridge in Shenandoah National Park from Front Royal to Waynesboro, VA. We got on the Drive at milepost 1 in Front Royal and exited westbound on Hwy 211 at about milepost 62. From there we continued west until we turned north on Hwy 340 back to Front Royal and our cozy spot in the Barbarian Invader.
This road is essentially the northern end of the Blue Ridge Parkway which we have been following since we were in Asheville back in mid-April. The Blue Ridge Parkway / Skyline Drive may be one of the most spectacular sections of road in the world although the speed limit maximum is 45 mph, which suits us just fine. From the Drive, if you look to the east you see the landscape of central and eastern Virginia descending toward Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic. If you gaze toward the west, you look down into the Shenandoah Valley and over to the Massanutten, a huge ridge that divides the Shenandoah Valley into eastern and western halves. There is very little here that isn’t pretty.
The portion of today’s ride on the Drive started at an elevation of about 900 feet and ascended to just under 3700 feet before we left the ridge. The scenery, other than the exquisite views east and west, consists of dense hardwood forest with a few grass meadows sprinkled in and we passed from clear conditions to short stints where we were in the dense fog because we had driven into the clouds hovering around the tallest sections of Blue Ridge. There is a steep drop down into the Shenandoah Valley where you leave the dense forest and transition into nice, tidy farms with emerald grass meadows divided by undeveloped sections of lowland forest. This part of the world must get plenty of rain because everything is some shade of vibrant green. If it was always springtime, I could easily be perfectly happy living here.