day 2 - hershey, pa to millersburg, oh

At 6:30am the next morning, we awoke. While this is normally unheard of for us (our college schedule usually ran something like noon-4am), it's easy to be an early riser when sleeping outdoors, as you can't really block out the sunrise. We quickly fried some dough in the frying pan for breakfast, packed up the tent, and then set out for a long drive through Pennsylvania.

Our plan was to drive through Western Pennsylvania, stop at Pittsburgh for lunch, and then end our day in Amish Country, specifically the town of Millersburg, Ohio. Again, we were treated to a lovely, partly-sunny day as we threaded our way through the Appalachian hills (sometimes literally, through tunnels such as the one below).

The nature of our trip offers a lot of freedom and few time constraints. As a result, we were able to make spontaneous detours and stops to investigate anything that might be of interest, regardless of whether they were on our planned itinerary. Often, roadside billboards offered clues to such places. One such billboard advertised "Creationfest 2009", a Christian festival in Union, PA. Unfortunately, it takes place at the end of the month - otherwise we would have certainly crashed it. Another billboard advertising "the craziest gift shop in Pennsylvania" led us to this gem in the town of Breezewood, PA:

The store was a ridiculous collection of gaudy redneck accessories, Steelers gear, tourist gifts, and taxidermist creations (bear, moose, deer heads, etc). Essentially, it was full of the most tacky, useless crap ever. We ran into an old lady cooing over this hideous pair of huge, gold, rhinestone-studded earrings shaped like football helmets (referred to proudly by the old lady cashier as "our bling-bling") and who also indicated that she "couldn't wait" to buy a Sarah Palin 2012 shirt whenever it became available. We paid for our cheap Liberty Bell replica, thanked the cashier, and then got out of there fast.

Some time later, we arrived at Pittsburgh. This is truly a city with character. It is essentially on a series of very steep hills, and driving through for the first time is an adventure. These pictures do not adequately illustrate the terror of turning onto a road and discovering that from where you are currently standing, you cannot see the bottom of the road because it is too steep. Furthermore, the city itself has a gritty, industrial feel - "roads" resembled grassy, overgrown driveways.

Some peoples' houses are essentially built on the edges of cliffs, and peek out of the sides of mountains.


For lunch, we stopped at an restaurant called Spice Island Tea House. Highly praised by Yelpers, it offered South Asian fusion cuisine, which was what we were looking for after a couple days of American food. I had a somewhat mediocre Pad Thai, while Roy had the Java Fried Rice, which he claims is one of the best fried rices he's ever had in his life. (I can't corroborate, as when I tried it my mouth was already ruined by the monotony of my Pad Thai and the sickly sweetness of my Thai Iced Tea.)

By chance, while allowing him to finish my food, I pressed a button on the iPhone Yelp application called "Nearby", which presents you with a list of highly-ranked locations close to your current spot (which it detects using the phone's GPS). Yelp revealed that one of the nation's best ice cream parlors, Dave and Andy's, was literally a block away. So off we went.

We ordered a scoop of mango ice cream in one of their homemade waffle cones. Frankly, it was the best ice cream I've ever had - creamy, fresh, perfect marriage of mango and dairy. It reminded us of the days of Toscanini's, the Mass. Ave ice cream behemoth that was open during our freshman year (before it decided not to pay its taxes one year and its doors were shuttered forever). Toscanini's too had served a killer mango flavor that I often bought to share with Roy in his Weld dorm room. But this...this was even better. And finally, as a cute little surprise, there was an M&M hidden at the bottom of the waffle cone - apparently, they use them to seal the bottom of the cone so that your ice cream doesn't drip out. Genius!!!


Finally, we took another hilly trek to the Duquesne Incline, essentially a tram that makes trips up and down the side of the Pittsburgh mountainside. From the overlook, we got a great look at the rest of the city, in all its gritty, industrial glory.




We said a relieved goodbye to Pittsburgh and its terrifying terrain, and then started on the drive to Holmes County, Ohio, home to the largest concentration of Amish and Mennonite people in the country. Pittsburgh lies on the Western edge of Pennsylvania, and it just so happened that our route passed through the very tip of West Virginia before putting us in Ohio.

I was excited about passing through West Virginia, simply because people make so much fun about the state (inbreeding jokes, hillbillies, etc). Unfortunately the drive went something like this: after much eagle-eyed searching, I managed to capture the photographic trophy of our foray below:

Five minutes later...


West Virginia was literally only three miles long. :(

However, the mountains had unfolded into the Ohio River Valley, which was absolutely lovely to see. I don't have good pictures of the scenery because the highway's side rails blocked most of it, but we snuck onto what was probably private property off the side of the highway to snap this quick shot.


Ohio is a lovely state, filled with many large lakes. (It was also the first real Midwestern state that we'd been in, and accordingly, the people that we saw got fatter and fatter.) Our quest to find Amish Country took us through some fairly rural roads, mostly farmland and small towns, and the landscape was dotted with cows and horses.

Finally, after hours of driving, we found some Amish people!

As a side note, the pictures of Amish people are going to be very bad, because it is generally impolite to just take pictures of random people without their permission, so most of our photos are of them in their buggies as they drove past our car.

The Amish here are primarily settled in a town called Berlin. They wear conservative clothing and headgear, drive a horse and buggy everywhere, and eschew the use of electricity, telephones, or automobiles. Driving through the town, we would often see them in their buggies, their horses trotting alongside cars on the side of the road.


Our first stop was at the Visitors' Center, where we learned about the difference between the Amish (more conservative) and the Mennonites (less conservative, more mainstream). We also had the chance to try on some Amish headgear.

The whole town is essentially a collection of Amish shops. We had a great time looking at Amish woodworking and quilting, and also at the other stores. Below are some examples of the old-fashioned style of the stores, as well as some items particular to the Amish (Amish romance novels!).


Unfortunately, we arrived at around 4, and in Amish Country, everything closes at 5pm except for the restaurants. Furthermore, we had arrived on Saturday afternoon, and because Sunday is Church day, nothing would be open the next morning except the doors of the house of God (open to visitors, incidentally, but we didn't end up going).

However, we still did pick up a couple of small souvenirs and ate dinner at a local Amish restaurant, Boyd and Wurthmann. We had sweet potato fries with cinnamon dip to start, followed by roast beef, mashed potatoes and gravy for me and sausage and home fries for Roy. Butterscotch pie for dessert. It was incredible. Everyone was so friendly and the food was so hearty and honest and delicious!


Finally, we drove over to the next town, Millersburg, where we checked in at the Hotel Millersburg, a lovely historic inn, and settled down for the night.