Amish, Valley Forge and New Hope (Philadelphia area)

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On my way to visit and stay with my cousins Mark and Fran, I stopped to visit an Amish village and then Valley Forge National Historical Park.

I must admit that I did not know much about the Amish before. I now have seen a house and thier farms. Very interesting lifestyle. No power from the grid goes into their house. Some houses have a telephone but they are a ways from the house in a “phone booth.” Some of the houses have solar but they are to charge batteries that in turn power a few things on the property. Some people have cell phones but they could only be used outside of the house for business. I believe they only provide schooling up to the 8th grade in lots of one room school houses.

Valley Forge was a winter camp for Washington‘s 12,000 isoldiers in 1777-1778 during the Revolutionary War. They build a lot of little log cabins that held 12 soldiers. That they lived I. For about 6 months.

I had a really nice time with Mark and Fran for two nights. Mark’s grandmother and my grandmother were siblings. We had dinner the first night with Fran’s sister and lunch with their youngist son and dinner with their older son and wife. During the day, it was raining pretty hard so it limited our sightseeing. I did get to see where Washington cross the Delaware and some covered bridges.

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