We arrived in Lancaster, PA shortly after lunch on Wednesday and our first stop was Five Guys Burgers and Fries, one of Brian’s favorite places to eat and I like it too especially the fresh cut fries. I suggested to Brian that we needed to sample local favorites while we are traveling and try to avoid (if possible) the chain restaurants. We were parked in an open field that backed up to a beautiful farmland at Roamers Retreat Campground. This was one of our first experiences to see an Amish farmer working in the field plowing and later bailing hay.

On Thursday went took a short drive to Hershey, PA to take a tour of the Hershey candy plant. We took the tour so we could learn how one of our favorite foods is made. Then we decided to find a local restaurant for lunch in Lancaster instead of eating around the town of Hershey.  Our choice was Jakey’s Amish Barbeque featuring pit cooked beef, pork, chicken and turkey along with a local side of corn fritters. The meat was being cooked just outside of the restaurant on a large cooker and you could definitely smell the wood burning.   I ate pork BBQ, Brian and Zachary ate chicken with corn fritters and Carson enjoyed a side of fresh cut French fries.  Corn fritters were made with funnel cake mix with kernels of corn added. You had the choice of powdered sugar or maple syrup with your corn fritters.  The pork was good but I am still partial to Eastern NC BBQ with hush puppies.  After lunch we stopped at a small Amish market and I bought fresh bread, cheese and vegetables along with homemade root beer. The family had this small market in front of their home and sold fresh vegetables, cheese, root bear (a popular item) and fresh baked goods. All of the vegetables were grown in the garden behind their house and were picked earlier that day.

On Friday June 22, we rode into Intercourse, PA to the Jam and Berry festival. There were samples of local berries and jams everywhere in addition to music, crafts and exhibits. Brian decided on his favorite food which was not berries or jam it was peanut butter made locally. The kids enjoyed the petting zoo with a miniature horse, a llama and goats next to the playground. We walked around the small town of Intercourse exploring the local shops and our favorite was a small pretzel shop called Immergut, which had the best soft pretzels I had ever eaten, the small pretzel shop was being run by two young Amish girls who told Carson they made and twisted about 200 pretzels per day during this time of year.  I had a sesame pretzel and Brian and the boys had cinnamon sugar pretzels. We later took a tour of a larger pretzel company and learned to make pretzels, we became official pretzel twisters.  After we left the festival we stopped at the farmers market to purchase some fresh vegetables for dinner. Our dinner consisted of fresh red potatoes, cabbage, corn and homemade wheat bread.

On Saturday we started out to ride through the Amish farmland and then have a traditional Amish and Mennonite Home cooking at a restaurant called The Family Cupboard. We sampled some of the local favorites such as fried chicken, rotisserie chicken, meatloaf and steak tips with gravy along with buttered noodles, mashed potatoes, corn and green beans and many different deserts including Shoo Fly pie a local favorite. Carson was not really thrilled with lunch so he enjoyed a bag lunch of yogurt and Cheerios and Zachary had a kid’s meal with chicken tenders and corn.  After lunch we went shopping at the outlets to try to walk off some of our lunch, not much excitement there since both boys were ready to get back to the motor home to play. Just before dark we noticed a horse and buggy coming in the campground from the field next to the campground; and watching we noticed that a young girl and boy were selling goods from the back of their wagon.  We purchased a Shoo Fly pie, another loaf of bread and some fresh eggs, they also were selling several types of homemade pies, jams, jellies. Carson was so curious and he wanted to talk to an Amish child so he followed us outside to talk to the young boy driving the buggy.  The young boy was very shy but he did tell us his name was Amos and he was 8 years old.  Carson did not understand why the young boy was not as talkative as himself.  The girl asked us were we were from and when we told her NC she said she thought she recognized the accent.  She told us that her family had friends in Kenly, NC and that is the reason she recognized our accent. I guess we will not be able to disguise ourselves since our accents were “caught” by a young Amish girl living in Lancaster.

We will continue documenting our visit in our next post.  Stay tuned.  In the meantime, watch our video slide show below for pictures from our trip.  I’ll try to make it a little shorter next time.  We just have so many pictures we have taken.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 at 12:25 am and is filed under Places we've Stayed. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.