anniversary trip

At the end of this month, The Excellent Wife (TEW) and I will celebrate the 20th anniversary of our first date. Neither the terrible Italian restaurant we went to, nor the even-worse karaoke singer who was the entertainment, are still available, so instead we did a 3-day trip to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. We stayed at the Misty Meadows Bed & Breakfast, where they treated us like folks (better than most of my family does!), and let us keep the bikes in their (frighteningly clean) garage; I recommend them if you're planning on staying & biking in the area. They're Mennonites, and, if anything, even better than we Quakers at that "radically welcoming" thing.

We did a bunch of touristy stuff, including a walking historical tour of Lancaster City, with a guide who was an educator in a previous life; despite the heat and his Colonial-era garb, he led us for almost two hours, and kept up a line of entertaining and informative patter the whole time; he was great. We bought the obligatory quilt; bought too much produce and dairy; turned up our noses at the touristy stuff that was too tacky even for us (I set the bar pretty low; I can be persuaded to do some pretty stupid things).

Today, on the way back, we stopped at Valley Forge and did the walking tour there (TEW is a NUTBALL about the Revolutionary War, the Declaration, and the original constitution; how did we EVER go this long living close to Philadelphia and not go to Valley Forge until now?). Then we stopped at an L. L. Bean to exchange something... because why not? We were passing that way, anyway!

Mostly, we relaxed. TEW said that the reason for the success of this trip was that we relaxed, and didn't HAVE to do many things. We had hoped to ride at least a couple of times, but only got out once, on a ride that was too hilly for TEW (but I give her credit for trying it; as one of the Hill Slugs says, "I've never seen the hill I couldn't walk up").

Pics. First, the place we stayed:

That's the amiable landlord on the front porch.

I got out to take some pictures of the view out the front window last night, and this guy was working across the street:

For those keeping score, that's a five-horse team, pulling a gasoline-powered prime mover, driving a mower. This guy can use the gasoline for the prime mover, but he can't use a tractor (for religious reasons). Plain Jim is not the only one with contradictions.

But the view out the front windows (including from the dining room) was immense. I crossed the street to get these pictures so the overhead lines wouldn't be in the way, but they are unedited: