Almost Home

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Wednesday, Sept. 25

Breakfast was at Sutton Country Store and Cafe - boy, did they had the bottles of jelly, jam, syrup, soups and anything else you can put in a bottle and Halloween candy bags. We drove along the interstate for the first couple of hours, around Albany. Then we crossed the Hudson to drive down the east river bank through Hyde Park. The route was more commercial than I had expected. We did not stop to tour any of the huge homes along that section. We crossed back over to the west bank at Beacon-Newburgh, NY.

We followed Highway 94 down through the countryside toward Allentown, PA. We really did not do anything special on this day. We ate lunch at Martina's Diner in Florida, NY. We stopped in Reading, PA where the first several motels we stopped at were full. But we found a first floor room at the Comfort Inn and received the "No TV" discount because the TV was not working.


Thursday, Sept. 26

This was our day to visit Pennsyvania Amish country. We drove on some of the small roads today. One of the roads went past Hopewell Furnace Historic Site. At the park, Mother got the VIP treatment from the staff in the visitors center while I toured for furnace and village.

I wanted to see the Sturgis Pretzel museum in Lititz- the first hard pretzel company in America. On the tour, we each twisted our own pretzel. They do make really delicious pretzels. We then went back to Blue Ball to the Shady Maple Buffets - the food was very plentiful, but the whole place was definitely for tourist and not much in the way of Amish. Along the road into Lancaster, we met a lot of horse drawn carriages.

York, PA had a lot of stop and go traffic which took up more time than I had planned. Into Maryland, we saw a sign for the National Memorial to Fallen Firefighters. It turned out that it was at the national training center for Firefighters and FEMA in Emmitsburg. We had to go through security to get into the facility. The monument was impressive. And, Mary Alice, they have a memorial walk of inscribed bricks. Also on the campus, they have a huge bronze sculpture of the three firefighters raising the American flag at ground zero - now that was even more impressive.

Just a mile down the road was a sign for "The Grotto of Our Lady" and we could see a huge gold statue of the Virgin Mary on the mountain - so up we went. The grotto is in a beautiful, wooded glen with statues, mosaics, bronzes and a lovely little chapel. It is a quiet inspirational place for meditation.

We stopped for the night at a Hampton Inn in Front Royal, VA - it was just starting to rain on us. We have been really lucky with the rain coming in at night.

Tomorrow we should be back in Black Mountain.

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