Day 149: Ronks to Shartlesville, PA

We set our sights on a fancy breakfast this morning. We found it in a real train dining car at the Casey Jones’ Restaurant. It was the best breakfast of the trip so far; huge portions, thick sliced sourdough toast, and scrapple - a delicious pork and cornmeal loaf, sliced and fried.

It was a foggy Pennsylvania morning.

Next we headed back through Amish Country to Shady Maple Farm Market, makers of 50 flavours of whoopie pies. In addition to purchasing a selection of whoopie pies, we picked up a bunch of local vegetables and other special treats like a pork roll and artisan pretzels.

Sample!

Scrapple of all different kinds.

Look at these huge, beautiful broccoli heads.

Crystal Cave, Pennsylvania’s oldest show cave, was next on our itinerary. Our tour guide was enthusiastic but we must admit that this cave wasn’t particularly exciting. It was discovered in 1871 and opened to tourists pretty shortly after. As a result, we suspect that many cave formations and decorations from the parts open to visitors have been removed over time and frankly, there is not much left. The coolest part of the tour was when the guide turned off the lights and shined a black light around. We could see the formations glow bright purple from impurities like manganese in the calcite. 

We drove along Route 61 and checked in to Appalachian Campground in Shartlesville where we set up camp. We went swimming, had a bonfire and played BINGO at the community hall with the permanent residents of this campground. We didn’t win and the boys found keeping up with the numbers while looking for the required pattern (W, L, F, I) a bit stressful but we had a few good laughs.

Day 148: Baltimore, MD to Ronks, PA

This morning was a bit of a rush to get to Lititz, PA for our visit to the Julius Sturgis Pretzel Bakery. We got stuck behind a truck going 10 km an hour and weaving back and forth on a road that was a double solid line for miles. This slowed us down and unfortunately made us a few minutes late for our 10:30 am tour.

We finally arrived at Julius Sturgis Pretzel Bakery - the first commercial pretzel bakery in the US, established in 1861.  After joining our tour, we learned that the bakery’s ingredients included flour, water, malt and yeast. We saw the flour mill, the large wooden spoon and bowl for mixing, the wooden club for kneading, and the wood fired brick ovens. We participated in a hands on tutorial on how to twist dough to make a pretzel. It seems pretzel twisting is not my forte (my pretzels looked like dough lumps), but it is an area where the boys excelled. Alistair’s pretzel looked practically perfect in every way. We were all gifted a bag of sample pretzels. They were the most crunchy pretzels we’d ever tasted with just the right amount of salt. Yum!

Mixing bowl.

Kneading stick.

Twisting machine.

Ovens (similar to what is used to bake Montreal bagels).

Trays that were used to bake the soft pretzels in the upstairs oven turning them into hard pretzels.

Our next stop was Pennsylvania Amish Country in Lancaster. We visited the Dutch Haven Shoo-Fly Pie Shoppe to purchase a famous shoo-fly pie, before exploring the Amish Village. As we drove through the Amish countryside, we saw Amish school children in their unpatterned dresses and plain coloured pants and shirts playing baseball barefoot outside their one room schoolhouse. We saw Amish men in their traditional straw hats driving horse drawn buggies along the road. We saw Amish farmers in the fields cutting corn by hand and piling it high on wooden wagons pulled by pairs or trios of horses. We saw huge tobacco leaves hanging in large wooden barns to dry. There was lots of solid coloured clothes hanging out on clothes lines, many farm stands loaded with pumpkins and lots of donkeys, goats, sheep, ducks, peacocks, and chickens.

At our visit to the Amish Village, we learned about modern Amish culture. We heard about their aversion to using electricity that comes from the grid but openness to using natural gas, propane, solar, etc. to generate power. We toured a traditional Amish house where we saw the living room which doubled as a church, the kitchen with its huge wood stove and oven, the bedrooms with few doors and curtains and beautiful hope chest for the family’s daughter. We checked out the summer kitchen with its gas powered Maytag wringer washing machine. We also saw the milk house with its natural spring used to keep food cool before refrigeration, the barn and the one room schoolhouse.

Propane fridge and compressed air mixer.

Kitchen.

Boys’ room.

Parents’ room.

Common clothes. All solid colours with no patterns.

Girls’ room.

Summer kitchen.

Maytag gas powered washing machine.

School house. Amish kids finish school after eighth grade.

After the Amish Village, we switched gears and transitioned to trains. We headed to the Pennsylvania Train Museum. This place felt like a real life visit to see Thomas the Tank Engine and friends.

We headed upstairs to see the fanciest model train set up. It was huge and had four trains running simultaneously.

After getting all excited about trains, we checked in to our very special overnight accommodation. We are staying in a real train car at the Red Caboose Motel! We have a fancy, spacious room inside an old caboose and we spent lots of time making friends with the farm animals at the motel’s petting zoo.

This is our train car for tonight.

Inside we go to check out our train car.

This goat has the treat dispenser figured out.

After supper we all crowded on to the bed to watch a family movie on the TV, complete with commercials. A bit old fashioned but cozy. Looking forward to railroad inspired dreams.