Lancaster to Hershey

Sunday, October 9th.  We awoke again to a beautiful, sunny day.  Because it was a holiday weekend and Gettysburg was so crowded, we decided to visit Lancaster (Amish country) and Hershey (chocolate country).

A wall mural in Intercourse

There are a group of small towns in the area of Lancaster where Amish folks live.  Two of those are Intercourse, PA and Bird-in-Hand, PA.  Unfortunately, because it was Sunday, many of the Amish owned stores were closed.  But we saw their handiwork in beautiful quilts, weavings and knitting.  We also saw Amish men driving horse-drawn carriages down the roadways.  A very unusual and interesting sight.

We then drove to Hershey, PA.  It's a very nice town and appears to be a modern day 'company town'.  Besides the huge factory, there's a museum, a visitors' center where they explain how chocolate is made and a full fledged amusement park.  And those are all facilities for tourists.  Hershey has also done many improvements for the community in the form of parks, public works and other community facilities.

We were amazed to find that Hershey makes so many varieties of candy beyond the chocolate we grew up with.  The visitor center includes a giant candy store featuring all the different types of candy and in all different sizes.  It was a quite fun and a sweet ending to the day.

Touring Gettysburg I

N. Carolina tribute monument

Saturday, October 8th.  As I described yesterday, there's so much Civil War information to see and digest all around Gettysburg...both in the city and around it.  We started out by going to the Visitor's Center to see what were the best ways to see all the sights.  We ended up purchasing a self guiding CD that takes you to all the high points of the 3-day battle.  It was interesting to see the locations where all the different troops were located and the strategy for moving to various locations.  There's so many monuments of different designs documenting the men from the various states who were there.  It was extremely sobering and awe-inspiring to see how many men were wounded and lost their lives

Troops 'manning' the cannons

We got about half way thru the CD tour and called it quits for the day and went back to the campground.  It was quite a day.

Traversing Pennsylvania

Friday, October 7th.  As we drove thru Penn. on our way to Gettysburg, we were impressed with the beauty of Pennsylvania.  Lots of rolling hills, farmland and changing colors on the trees.  As we approached Harrisburg, the capital, traffic became quite heavy.  We had to negotiate a beltway around the city to get to the correct road for Gettysburg.  We got to our Gettysburg exit at about 3 in the afternoon.  As we're driving on Taneytown Road to the campground, we saw many signs of the battle.  There were many monuments along the road indicating the location of troops from various states.  Also, signs documented many of the old farmhouses as being hospitals during and immediately after the battle.  Gettysburg was a town of about 2400 people at the time and they had to deal with about 25,000 wounded in the war.  That's on top of the 51,000+ that were killed during the battle.  But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

It turns out that this is Columbus Day weekend.  While that was not generally a holiday in Arizona or Washington, it sure is here.  The campground was 100% full and the City of Gettysburg was packed.  It turns out that this is the first sunny weekend after 4 rainy weekends in a row.  So everyone was enjoying the sunshine.  And we did too.

Leaving New England

Thursday, September 6th.    We awoke to windy, cloudy skies and took off for our trip around New York, making a wide circle to avoid New York City traffic.  For the most part traffic wasn't too bad.  We made it to Waldon, NY, which is the site of Waldon Pond inspiration.  A pretty area of small towns and rolling hills.  We're half way to Gettysburg.

Touring Cape Cod

Wednesday, October 5th.  We awoke to another sunny morning.  It was windy last night, but no rain.  Our campsite is amongst these large scrub oak trees and you couldn't help but wonder if limb come down in the wind...But they didn't.  After breakfast we began our tour of Cape Cod.  The main road goes right up the spine of the cape and frankly we couldn't tell if we were on a backroad in Michigan, or Vermont or Maine. But it's what's eminating off that spine road that's interesting.  There are many beautiful beaches, light houses and little towns.  I'm sure the towns are packed in the summer.  But now that schools back in the tourist population is lighter and with lots of europeans.  Even the Ben & Jerry's is closing for the season.  The main town is Provincetown at the very northern tip of the cape.  It has a historic, Key West feel to it.  Very artsy, lots of shops, galleries, small restaurants and B &B's.  P-Town, as they call it is the site where the Pilgrims first touched foot on north american soil.

Enjoying the National Seashore

Cape Code hosts a National Seashore designation.  And the beaches are pretty.  But aren't any nicer than Lake Michigan beaches...and those are fresh water.  All in all, Cape Cod was very nice, but it's not on our list of places to return to.

Brewster, MA; Cape Cod

Tuesday, October 4th.  We've experienced our first "Nor'easter".  It blew so hard last night and into the morning that the motorhome was shaking.  And Rain...now we're from Seattle and we've seen lots of rain...But this rain last night was amazing.  It was so hard and so horizontal.  When we got up there were deep puddles all over the place (and this is sandy soil).  We waited all morning, waiting for the rain to subside.  But it didn't.  So we packed up in the rain (again) and took off for Cape Cod.

To get there we had to go thru Boston.  We actually drove thru "the Big Dig", which is a freeway (6 lanes) that goes under downtown Boston.  The tunnel goes literally for miles and it's deep enough to drive a motorhome thru.  It was pretty amazing.

We got to Brewster mid afternoon.  It was a sunny day down here and we enjoyed 'drying out'.  We look forward to exploring the Cape tomorrow.

Rainy Sunday/Sunny Monday

Monday, Oct. 3rd.   We packed up the motor home, hooked up the car and drove down to Salisbury Beach in the rain.  Have I said how not fun it is to be doing all the disconnecting/connecting in the rain?  Well, it's not.  The drive was in very heavy traffic.  Lots of folks returning from a weekend in Maine back to Boston and New York.

Our campground in Salisbury Beach is a Massachusetts state park.  It's located right where the Merrimac River dumps into the Atlantic.  It wasn't really raining as we set up there...just a light mist.  On the recommendation of a neighbor, we had dinner at the Hungry Traveler restaurant.  Diane had a wonderful shrimp and crab in a lobster sauce casserole and I had prime rib and stuffed shrimp.  Very good restaurant!

Presbyterian church

George Washington statue 

This morning we awoke to mixed sun and clouds.  But the clouds soon gave way to a beautiful sunny day. We took a drive over to Newburyport, just across the Merrimac from Salisbury.  Newburyport is full of history.  It was the first port established...before Boston.  It is also where the Coast Guard began.  We took a walking tour around the town.  Lots of houses have been preserved in their 1600's and 1700's style.  And lots of old churches.  The downtown had lots of shops, restaurants, galleries and museums.

We came back to the campground and took Buster to the beach for a sunny, relaxing afternoon.