Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Wednesday: Amish country and Hershey, PA
We went to visit and learn about the Amish that live around the area. We visited the towns of Intercourse, Bird in Hand and spent most of our time around a place called “Plain and Fancy Farm” where we went on a buggy ride and bus tour. It was quite interesting to see how they think about technology and what they choose to use. Some interesting examples – they’re happy to use engines to help with farming, but not to propel the farm equipment. For example, we saw many farmers with horses pulling their engine driven tillers. Many of them ride scooters, but they aren’t permitted to ride bikes. They believe bicycles are too fast and will tend to break up their community. They use electricity (for things like lights on their horse-drawn buggies), but are not allowed to have electricity brought to their home (unless someone needs it for medical reasons). This is to avoid the pitfalls of things like TV and computers. Anyway, it was a very interesting view into a pretty different culture that co-exists with our modern day American culture.
Then we went to Hershey, PA because the girls really wanted to see the factory. The “factory tour” is really an amusement park ride that describes how chocolate is made, but does not let you see any of the real plant. We also did a chocolate tasting lesson that was more interesting than I expected since I don’t know the first thing about chocolate.
When we got back to camp, we had our first fire and the girls made foil stew that cooked on the fire (in-between short downpours).
# posted by Craig @ 9:00 PM 
