Weekend to Remember

     For someone who claims he doesn't travel -- see last month's post  Why I Don't Like to Travel -- I seem to do a lot of traveling. Okay . . . in my defense, I usually don't go very far. My comfort zone is a couple of hundred miles, a three or four hour drive.

     Last weekend we journeyed to Lancaster, Pa. B has some family in the area, including her 98-year-old mother who lives in an assisted living facility. Lancaster, she tells me, has become a destination for many retirees because it has top-notch health facilities, a variety of independent and assisted living options, and a notably caring community.

     We didn't stay with her mother. We stayed in a very nice B & B a few miles outside of town. And I was surprised -- the place was full! Who would go to Lancaster, Pa. in November?

E. J. Bowman House Bed & Breakfast

      The area is a tourist destination for people who go to see the Amish riding in a horse and buggy. We didn't see any Amish on our long weekend, but we did see a few Mennonites (I think of them as Amish-lite). And we also saw a few other attractions. For example, there is a lot of history connected to the area. Lancaster was the capital of the Unites States for exactly one day during the Revolutionary War. It was also the hometown of a U. S. President . . . President James Buchanan, who is never considered among the best of the U. S. Presidents. But still, he was a President.

Home of James Buchanan, U. S President, 1857-61

     There's also a college on the edge of town. Franklin & Marshall is a small liberal arts college that's part of the Centennial Conference, which includes Swarthmore, Haverford, Johns Hopkins, Gettysburg, Bryn Mawr and a few others.

Kind of screams college campus, doesn't it?

    There's an historic downtown area with a theater and an arts hotel and a stadium for a minor league baseball team. I didn't take a photo of the baseball stadium (not very interesting), but I was very impressed with the train station.

One impressive train station ... and I like the bicycles

     An interesting thing, in my book, is how you can be walking along the city streets . . .

Street scene in the city

      . . . and then drive out just a few miles, and you're in the country, with corn fields all around. A corn field probably doesn't seem very exotic to most people. But I never see a corn field where I live. Any undeveloped land around where I live is covered with hills and woods, not farms and fields.

Recently plowed under

     Finally, I have to make one confession. Most people, when you ask them what their favorite store is, say Nordstrom's, or R.E.I., or something like that. My favorite store is the local convenience store. We have 7-11 and AM/PM, and they're both perfectly adequate as far as convenience stores go. But they don't hold a candle to Wa Wa, which you find in New Jersey and around Philadelphia. But even better than Wa Wa is Turkey Hill, and we ran across several of them around Lancaster. And, by the way, regular gas was selling for $2.93 a gallon. Now there's a trip worth making!

My favorite store, esp. when gas is $2.93!!