Lancaster Pennsylvania Road Trip – 2 of 14

by usathroughoureyes
State of Pennsylvania and the location of the city of Lancaster.

Welcome back everyone to our Lancaster PA road trip part 2 and picking up where we left off last.

Our second planning stage was what do we want to discover? Now PA is a big state so now we needed to hone in on a city and or town.  As our search continued one stood out that tad of uniqueness we were looking for which was Lancaster.  This was because it was home to a very large population of Amish, second only to North East Ohio.

If you are not familiar with the Amish  that’s okay, we weren’t either until this adventure.  They arrived in America 300 years ago and settled in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania where today it is home to around 30,000 hardworking Amish families whose lives revolve around their church, families and land.  Wow, what a great and novel value system to revolve around.  The Amish hold fast to their Christian belief of the Bible with a strong desire to reject many worldly creature comforts they feel distract from fully focusing on an intimate, personal relationship with God.  Their desire stands out from many religious denominations that accept and build their relationship with God around ever-increasing creature comforts of automobiles, cell phones, computers, internet, etc., etc.  Now here one, including us, could easily say, how does choosing to avoid all those things which make life easier create a closer relationship with God?  Well, the operative word is choosing.  In general, they choose to believe this and when you look at the fact it doesn’t break any legal statutes or harm anyone don’t they have this right?  It was truly interesting trying to look at them from their perspective rather than ours. Hmmm and here we thought our ways were the only ways, lol! I guess this is one of the many great freedoms we have (or do we) to think differently and not be threatened or beaten because of this difference.

Pennsylvania also is home to 197 covered bridges .  We didn’t know nearly 14,000 authentic wooden covered bridges once existed in our Nation and today less than 900 remain. Time and technology took its toll on the bridges until recent years when Federal grants came available for states to restore and rebuild many of the historic structures. Many of covered bridges are being destroyed by Mother Nature and at the hands of arsonist plus those that were on the verge of collapse.  Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Vermont have a combined total of over 550 authentic covered bridges with Pennsylvania leading with over 197. Many of the covered bridges still standing are over 150 years old.

The Susquehanna River  is very well known because it is a waterway located in the northeastern United States and is 464 miles long and the longest river on the American east coast that drains into the Atlantic Ocean.  For our friends following us throughout the world equivalent rivers in those regions would be the Mahanadi in India, Seine in France, Warta in Poland, and Meuse in the Netherlands, twice the length of the Severn in the UK, Rupert River in Canada, Murray River in Australia and the Nossob in South Africa.  Like all major rivers, they are major sources of recreation, transportation, food, etc., as well as stories for writers and poets.

Here is a video of some of the highlights from our journey through the Lancaster, Pennsylvania region.

If you by chance didn’t see a part please click on one of the links below and be whisked directly there,

Well this is it for today.  We hope to see you back again where we’ll pick back up where we left off.

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~ USA Through Our Eyes ~ Stories Told Through Words, Photographs, Videos and Sound

48 thoughts on “Lancaster Pennsylvania Road Trip – 2 of 14”

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  7. We love how you worded this Theresa!!! “…frustration comes from thwarting expectations”. We believe there is substantial truth to this point. We all have these gifts and then we hide them away. We are truly learning to live each minute fully because we know it is a gift.

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  8. Yes we are so encouraged because its like the stories we hear are the stories of our own lives when we stop and listen to the challenges overcome and the joys and hardships of life. It almost validates why we are all here. It is nice having folks like you along with us.

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  9. Oh my goodness. Kindness goes a long way, especially these days. Your point goes to that it’s all in the mindset. I read somewhere, frustration comes from the thwarting of expectations. And so, if you’re not in a hurry and you’re enjoying the experience, no frustration!

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  10. Oh! I find it very intriguing that you are encouraged by others’ comments to feel like going back out again, and that the comments celebrate your traveling – in a cycle! So interesting. 🙂

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  11. We didn’t mind when we got behind them on the roadways. Others seemed impatient. We like seeing their positive interaction with each other in the buggies and the way they were so kind to others when the others weren’t so kind.

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  12. Thank you Theresa. We are learning with each trip and encounter. It is so fun to see then share the moments. Then when we hear such wonderful comments from you and others we want to get out there again, lol.

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  18. I never knew about the Amish community. This is a wonderful informative post that makes me want to look further into these people. I get that feeling of a weight being lifted from off me as you went through the list of things they choose not to have. We have internet, cars, gadgets etc all this reminds of bills bills bills and work work work. No time for life these gadgets ain’t gonna support themselves. lol.

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  24. I am enjoying your road trip. The information about the Amish is very interesting and informative. I do know about them and have seen their lifestyle featured in movies but it is nice to read information written by someone who has been there.

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  27. Pingback: Lancaster, PA Road Trip – 3 of 14 | "USA Through Our Eyes"

  28. The video you made was so serene, peaceful and amazing. It felt like I was watching a movie. Keep up the very informative blog 😊👍

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  36. Yes! Reading the blog, and you wright indeed about the Amish people. I saw movies about them and read books, but they believe me to strong. Interesting to read about Pennsylvania and all the things you have seen overthere. Warm greetings, Ann.

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  38. Thanks Aya. We are pleased that it allowed you to return to that time and place when you last visited. We think you’ll like the upcoming videos and stills and stories over the next few post. We’re having fun learning video.

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  39. Yes Margaret and when we started looking at their life choices there is substance to how all the little gadgets end up pulling us from knowing Him more. As we walked over the bridges and studies their design we couldn’t help but think about the number of lives that crossed these bridges and the snippets of conversations that were going on as they were crossing them on foot, car or horse and buggy.

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  45. Awesome. We have a folder and this will be in it. It is so great when we hear others talk about the areas they stay at so we don’t duplicate a bad experience. We certainly can relate about spending some money…. as the post progress on our PA trip we stumbled upon an Amish shop that does canning. Thought we would have to put roof racks on the van to haul the goodies home, lol.

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  46. It was in Mt. Eaton at the Evergreen RV Park. Park was spotless with an indoor pool and the best bath house I’ve ever seen in an RV Park. There was also an Amish grocery where I spent some money…

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  47. It will be good for us to read your post on Ohio and the Amish. They are an interesting group. We can relate to your memory of visiting places in our youth and not remembering certain things because our thoughts are somewhere else. We learned so much this time there and intend to go back. Then we’ll be able to couple it with Ohio and what you encountered. Thank you for sharing your experiences so we can learn and grow.

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  48. Looking forward to reading the rest of your posts. We discovered an Amish community in Ohio purely by accident a few years ago (I’ll get to it in my Ohio post!). I visited Lancaster with my parents when I was a teenager but don’t remember much about it – I was a teenager after all!

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