A Different Lancaster

I drive to the Lancaster area about five times a year for many years.  I like the drive, about fifty minutes on predominantly rural roads with farms displaying dairy herds, corn fields to feed them, and tobacco to harvest and sell to support other activities.  The route takes me to Amish country east of town.  Depending on the route, often chosen by me as a path I don't remember taking before, I sometimes pass a small Pennsylvania Railroading complex with a museum and a motel cobbled from cabooses.  This time my destination was a hotel occupied by close friends visiting the area.  The GPS guided me through streets unfamiliar.  I saw a group of Hasidim with large family or campers touring a museum/farm well past the common tourist destinations.  

Lancaster seems to have several zones.  East of the city are the Amish and Mennonites with tourist attractions, ethnic places to eat, some vestiges of their unique lifestyle that people from elsewhere come to see.  Then there are places that cater to tourists, a long route of motel, chain restaurants, outlet malls, and shopping plazas with the same anchors as everyplace else.  Enter the highway, encounter some traffic, then proceed onto the city.  There really is a small city with a central area of shops and an iconic Central Market with specialty places to get lunch.  There are large employers including a renowned elite college and just past the town a branch of the state university system.  A former President's mini-estate conducts tours.  And then there is the place people live, with housing developments, medical facilities, fast food, supermarkets, and malls where people get their furniture.  That is where my friends stayed.  A suite hotel with a pool, exercise room, and breakfast area, the place where the college might house its visiting lecturers or company representatives needed to close a deal might stay.  Next door neighbors, a branch of the local medical center and a megamart.  Places to eat branches of national and regional chains.  Close enough to tourism with a car, theirs a rental. Close enough to the central city.  And close enough to the housing developments that the supermarket and retailers depend upon.

When I travel, I tend to seek out the unfamiliar.  In Lancaster that would be Amish country, maybe still the outlets, the Farmer's Market which sells more kitsch and snacks than produce, the expansive Kettle Village.  I rarely eat there, never been to Dutch Wonderland, even when I had little kids. And while I've taken a guided tour, I've not yet ridden in a buggy. Wheatland, the estate of President Buchanan is a magnificent tour that needs to be taken no more than once.  And there are the views from my windshield, Amish women harvesting the tobacco leaves, horses pulling a plow.  For me, each day trip there, really more a half-day is a little different but a little familiar.  None of it is suburban mall or supermarket.

Different Route

Among my favorite outings has been Pennsylvania Dutch country, less than an hour away.  Lancaster, Pennsylvania also has the shopping outlets, once a much bigger lure than now, as seen by the ease of parking these past few years.  They have farmers markets, restaurants based on the pig, along with the department store chains and franchise restaurants on the main drag.  But it has always been the rural sections with buggies, kids and women coasting on bicycles that they push along with their left foot as pedals are prohibited by their sects, real farms, some grown quite large, and other out of the way places that keep me coming back as a brief escape from home.

I have two routes there, my usual path from home, Route 41 to 30, the Lincoln Highway, or Route 896 that connects the University of Delaware to the Rockvale Outlets.  Each main route has a number of places where roads less travelled can be accessed.  One takes people to Strasburg, built around the Pennsylvania Railroad Museum and steam engine ride, with most of the town having a rail theme.  One road takes people to Oxford, a larger place than I expected that seems to rise from nowhere.  Whatever cross road you take, it will eventually connect to Route 41 or 896 so getting to Lancaster is pretty much a sure thing, but just in case I can set the GPS.  So yesterday I hit Pizza/Atglen, got off Route 41 where I always wanted to but never did and stayed on Route 372, not quite following the GPS to the pizza destination.  Virtually entirely farms with perhaps and occasional small factory with a bunch of cars in the lot.  A few modern houses that could pass as suburban tract housing.  I always wondered how people in these places make a living when business are few and do not need a lot of workers, and certainly not a lot of highly paid workers, other than the utility companies, hospitals and school districts.  Amish buggies and bicycles but hardly any cars other than mine.  Not even a lot of churches.  Eventually this road found its way to 896, which I followed to the Rockvale outlets, stopped briefly at two stores, and returned in the direction of Strasburg, which advertised itself on the billboards as an historical destination.  GPS indicated a nearby winery just outside my route home, but on arrival it was defunct.  Just headed home.  Pleasant outing as it always is.