April 28, 2008
Road trip
Written by RobynDeHart in Jaunty Post
Week before last my mother and I went on a road trip. She was going with me to the RT conference and well, I had figured Pittsburgh was roughly 10 hours from my house so we should drive it instead of fly because it would be a beautiful drive and we’d save some money. Okay, this idea of mine game before gas became the price of gold, but you know it was still cheaper than flying. In any case the more we planned the trip, the more I thought that if we added a day or two we could do some extra things. You see for whatever reason, my mother has always been fascinated by the Amish culture and has always wanted to see Amish country. I figured everything out and realized that the drive to get to Amish country wouldn’t take us any longer on the way up and would only add 4 hours to get from there to Pittsburgh. So I started looking at everything I could find on Lancaster county PA, trying to find a hotel and everything and I ran across this one website that seemed to be go-to site for all things Amish country.
I told my mom about what I’d found and the name of some of the cities, Intercourse being my favorite. Well, really, how can you not enjoy that irony? So I slyly suggest we stay in the lovely Intercourse and my mom says nope, she just can’t do it. How will she tell my father? 
But I’m thinking it’s a perfect phase 1 before an RT conference. Needless to say I found this instead. http://www.800padutch.com/lancastercity.shtml Go ahead, go look at it, I’ll wait.
Are you back? Great. Sounds like a quaint village, don’t you think? Now if any of you are from PA, I’m sure you’re laughing by now. It’s okay, I deserve it, but this website is misleading. So we book our night at the historic Hotel Brunswick in historic downtown Lancaster - presidents have stayed here, it’s a classic. As we’re driving into Lancaster, my mom’s eyes are glued to the windows.
“I don’t see any Amish,” she says.
“No,” I say through gritted teeth.
“Not really what I expected.”
“Let’s just get to the hotel, I’m sure downtown will be charming.”
Thank God we had brought my GPS unit in the rental car, she kept us going in the right direction as we’d never have found half of the right places. But she steered us straight to Hotel Brunswick in the heart of Lancaster, which incidentally is a city. Like a real city, and the hotel was nestled right in the inner city fully equipped with loud music, sirens and stinky streets. Did y’all know this? There are no Amish in the city of Lancaster. And that charming prison built to resemble a castle in Lancashire, England, looks like something from a giant miniature golf set - yes, it’s that cheesy.
The day actually got worse from here, suffice it to say we ended up eating at a Bob Evans because we wanted to get back to our hotel before it got dark. The following day we did head east instead of going straight to Pittsburgh, and we eventually found the Amish, with the gentle rolling hills spotted with their farms and the buggies driving alongside the cars.
We walked through a quilt museum and went to a farmer’s market where they sold amazing looking fruits and vegetables and homemade breads and pastries. We drove through the countryside and looked at their farms with their clothes hanging on the line to drive. And it was charming and beautiful and my mother totally loved it. Wanna know where we were? Yep, you guessed it. Intercourse.
So how about you? Ever take a trip that wasn’t quite what you’d expected?
Hey, pictures take up a lot of space and I wanted it to look like I really worked on this blog for y’all. But mostly I’m trying to rush right through it and get back to my writing. Wish me luck. And I hope I have new of a completed (and brilliant) book very soon.
