We drove up through Gettysburg on our way here from Virginia. I wish we could have spent a day there, there is so much history in that town, and it looks like a beautiful little antique town, interesting on its own as well. We stopped for a half hour and saw some of the Civil War museum there. Many of the battlefield sites can be walked to along a walking tour, and you can try to imagine the smoke and fire and confusion of those three days in 1863, when over a hundred thousand troops collided and over 50,000 casualties occurred. I forget how many hundreds of tons of ammunition were deposited there too in those short days.

Driving to the visitor's center there, the 18th century streets were often narrow and we had a little collision with an overhanging tree. Two loud bumps. Didn't know what hit us till we saw our passenger's side mirror was knocked, but when we got to the campsite that evening and tried pushing out our bedroom, Mark felt some resisitence, and it turned out that the tree had also knocked the cover of our canopy. Everything is fine; here are the pictures, just for grins:

The sites here at French Creek State Park are wooded and attractive, but not very level. We had to try both available sites, and then try different spots on the better of the two sites, till we found that if we scrunch all the way toward the road, it's level enough for our jacks to level us up. So far, our bad back jack is working for us, and the Bigfoot dealer (located near Chicago) says it should be fine until he can fix it personally for us in June.

On our way to the town of Lancaster, Katie and I stopped at a visitor's center that used to be a one-room Amish schoolhouse, along Hwy 23. Here it is:

Inside was a very nice man, Mr. Ben Lapp, who is Amish Mennonite, and who told us about the school (it closed in 1965, but there is another like it nearby that they still use; this one was too close to the busy street for the parents) and the Amish people. There are over thirty groups here, each following slightly different rules sometimes, so one group allows folks to ride bicyles, but others are not allowed to. Some of them use diesel powered generators to run appliances and lights in their homes, but some of them still don't have running water inside the house. Some of the rules sound kinda arbitrary to me, and I think they do to him too. It's okay to have solid rubber wheels for some, but not inflated rubber wheels. Anyway, he was so kind, and I really enjoyed learning about the culture a little. Here he is:

He has a patch on his temple where his doctor removed a little patch of skin that was cancerous. After 83 years of working and playing outdoors, I guess that's to be expected.

Here's a typical stone farmhouse out here.

Here's a typical Amish farm out here. Nicer than the ones in southcentral Tennessee, but also more commercial looking, newer looking, less old-timey.

By the way, folks here also sell stuff from their farmhouses, but they have professional signs made instead of hand-lettered ones. And I found out that Mondays are generally washdays for the Amish, so that's why I saw so much laundry on the lines that one day in Tennessee.

Katie and I hit a yard sale along the highway (she got a Clue game which has the Simpsons as the characters, for a buck) and then we drove out to the Landis Valley Museum, sort of a mini Williamsburg, except it's here in Amish country, and it covers multiple centuries with different buildings. The Landis brothers grew up around 1900 on their family's farmland, that had been farmed by that same family since the 1770s. The boys liked to collect old 18th and 19th century farm and country antiques that they realized were starting to disappear in the early 20th century. Finally they turned their collection into a museum and then got donations to buy additional property and create a living heritage museum. Here are a few pictures of the place now.

Here's the log cabin's barn, showing how the first of the Landises lived here in the 1700s. Katie is being held by a reinactor named Katie; they both took to each other. Here's another of them. Katie is showing Katie a brand new baby lamb:

This house was built by the family in about 1800. Here Lois is showing Katie how they made the beds back then, with a rope bed, a straw mattress, a linen sheet, a down featherbed, various bolsters (you didn't lie all the way horizontally, but sort of propped yourself up in bed), and, because this was before cotton mills came along and made cotton cheap, so there were no quilts here yet, a wool woven coverlet.

I should have taken a picture of the toy bed all made up; it was quite cute, with its trundle that fits underneath, for the babies to sleep on (they didn't use pillows, kinda like Katie).

For about a half hour, we picked long blades of grass for this one sheep, and fed it by holding the bouquet out for it or putting it on the fence rails.

Katie could have done this all day long I think.

It was a fun day for the two of us. The next day, we all (including Mark) went into Philly for the day. Here are the pictures from that:

Katie's stickers (found on the ground outside) state that she is a government exhibit.

Like everywhere else, you have to go through security these days to see the Liberty Bell, but the building is very nice, with exhibits on the bell that teach you about stuff like the crack:

The last time the bell was rung by the clapper was for Washington's birthday in 1846. It cracked even more at that time, and it was decided that the bell might crack in half if it's ever rung like that again. Here's the support goo inside the bell now:

The chips along the edge are either evidence of "souveniers" from the bell's early days or else evidence of the bell's being tuned; they used to chip off a piece to tune it, the guard said.

George Washington sat in this very chair to preside over the Continental Congress when they debated the Articles of Confederation and when they got their differences ironed out and signed the Constitution.

After seeing the historic stuff, we walked to a little playground and then down to South Street, which is sort of like Berkeley's Telegraph Avenue, but wilder. Lots of murals on the buildings, strange stores and seedy characters. And the alleys are only about 48 inches wide. It's a very interesting street, but I liked it better by day than after the sun went down.

We ate dinner in a restaurant that is in the building where Larry Fine (of the 3 Stooges) was born. The chili was very good, and I also had a cheese steak sandwich, just to try one (I thought the chili was better).

Today is our last day, and it's Saturday. When we got back to camp late last night after our day trip to Philly, the whole campground was full of campers. They must have all come all day Friday. Apparently trout season started on Friday, and so now it feels like summer break, there are so many families here, most of them in tents. Here is our site and the girls (Rachel and Megan) Katie has played with all day. Yea for making friends!

Tomorrow we head north to another state park in Pennsylvania, then into New Jersey to visit my old friend Traci...