On Friday afternoon, Linda and her aunt did some grocery shopping, then Friday evening
Linda made a really great dinner for the three of us and one of Aunt Doris' good friends.
On Saturday, I gave Lili a pretty good walk, and then Linda, Aunt Doris and I did a little bit
of shopping in the Alexandria, VA old town.
Sunday, May 19
On Sunday we hit the road again, and this was the kind of day that we had envisioned for
the whole trip. We probably on drove about 200 miles during the whole day, and the first
100 of that entailed backtracking from Washington, DC to Harrisburg, PA. Once we got
there, we got off expressways, and stayed on relatively rural roads.
The down side of a Sunday visit is that all of the craft and food stores were closed to honor
the Sabbath. That may have saved me some money, but it would have been nice to see some
of the crafts.
Here, the farms continued to very picturesque, even if they weren't all Amish. With the
back roads, slow speeds, and very bucolic surroundings, it made a most pleasant afternoon.
By the time we had gotten through the area, it was mid afternoon, and we hadn't really had
much to eat. We were hoping that we could get some good Pennsylvania Dutch food, but in
the areas where that was most likely, things were pretty well closed up for the day. We
eventually came across a tavern that was open and we stopped there for some dinner. This
definitely brought us out of the serene and back into the real world. It appeared to be a
community bar for which the regular customers had just finished watching a stock car race
on TV. Although it was anything but serene, we did have some good food, and then set out
to find a campground in which to stay.
Monday, May 20
We got up this morning to clear and cold weather, but we had not slept well last night. For
some reason, Lili was really agitated. In the past, the very few times she has woken us up at
night was if she had to potty. Last night she got Linda up, but just wanted to go outside and
sniff. We are encamped right next to a wooded area, and she seems to think that there is
something in there that she wants to go after.
In the hopes that her agitation is just from an insufficient amount of exercise we decide
that she needed a volkswalk today. (I hesitate to say "lack of exercise" because she always
gets some. It is just that on the days that we are primarily traveling, she might only get a
total of a mile or so of walking, rather than the four to eight miles she would like to get.)
Since it looked like the weather would hold, we took the hour drive into Philadelphia to do a
walk in the historic parts of town. It is a pretty city, and the walk was very nice. There
were only two problems. One is that when you are walking with a dog, you cannot go into all
of the attractions that would be fun. For this reason, we will have to come back another
time – without the dog – to go into the attractions. The other problem was that there are
several other people who want to see the same kinds of sites that we do. This impacted us
most at the Liberty Bell. There was a line just to view it that appeared to be a couple of
hours long. We decided that we could view a replica somewhere else.
We did get to see Betsy Ross' house, Independence Hall, and the home where Jefferson
wrote The Declaration of Independence (although we didn't get an opportunity to tour any
of them. In addition we saw many rows of old, Federal Period homes, the very baroque City
Hall, and Franklin's grave. Probably the most surprising of all of these sites is that
Franklin's grave is marked by just a flat piece of marble – not even a headstone.
Our first stop was in
Hershey, PA, where we had to take a short tour of "Chocolate World," the Hershey
Chocolate promotion and gift shop. That was kind of a fun thing to do, but not particularly
edifying.
From there we headed east into Lancaster County. That included some spectacular rolling
hills, covered with very picturesque farms. Eventually we turned onto even smaller roads
and encountered some Amish towns. Here we had what was probably mixed luck in that we
drove through on a Sunday.
There were many of the Amish horse carriages carrying people
around, apparently doing there Sunday afternoon visiting. For a little while, we were
following a carriage in which the back window was down and there were two little girls in
their black and white clothes and straw hats. Later we saw what appeared to be a carriage
with a couple of young girls right behind, following on pairs of inline skates.
