As part of our goal to see all of the fifty states, Jason and I decided to take a trip to Pennsylvania to see the famous Frank Lloyd Wright house “Falling water”.  Unfortunately after we rented a car and took a day off from work we found out that Falling water was closed for repairs.  Apparently Frank’s houses aren’t as sturdy as they are beautiful.  So, instead, we headed to Amish country.  I was a little skeptical because of our experience in Salem.  I thought maybe all the Amish stuff would be a hokey tourist trap like some kind of twisted Weird Al Yankovich video.  When we pulled off the main road to try and find some genuine farmland we were suddenly in the middle of beautiful, perfectly groomed golden fields.  For acres and acres, all you could see was gold with an occasional little wooden house sprinkled here and there.  And lo and behold we saw a bearded hat wearing man driving a team of giant horses pulling a plow.  They were real!  After that, everywhere we went we were bombarded by these carriage driving people.  Jason would only take pictures of them from afar because it seemed so bizarre to have come to stare at people who are different than you in there own back forty…

As we made our way through this anachronistic place, we also saw several covered bridges.  My question is why are they covered?  I still don’t know.  We headed to Harrisburg where we spent the night and then woke up bright and early the next morning to go to Hershey!  Man, it was cold!  We did a tour of the “plant” (it is a fake tour- they stopped taking people through the real plant years ago), but it was fun. 

Next we veered south to Gettysburg, which is a beautiful area that has a driving tour of all its battlefields and memorials.  This was great for us because by now it was FREEZING.  We only got out to take pictures and even then ended up with soar throats.  After we could stand the cold no more we headed into town and ate at this neat little place that was built over 200 years ago.  It is all still very old fashioned, with only candlelight and tasty treats like hot buttered rum.  And it made you feel like you had fallen asleep and woken up in the past.

We reluctantly dragged ourselves away from the cozy little tavern and hit the road to Philadelphia.  What a weird city.  Everyone parks on the islands in the middle of the road!  Our plan was to see the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall and then head home.  Well, Independence Hall was closed and we had to wait in line for 30 minutes to see the Liberty Bell, so after that we headed back to New York.

We had decided we had time to either stop in Atlantic City for a couple hours or to go to Levittown, this place we saw a documentary on because it’s so “perfect” that it is abnormal.  We opted for the freak show of normalcy and spent three hours on Pennsylvania back roads trying to see this city where all the houses are exactly alike.  Surprisingly, we never really found it, but I could tell we were close.