Pearson 4 Road Trip - 06/09 Dover, OH (Amish country)

June 9 - Aunt Carole's journal:

Happy birthday, Becky.  I have such nice nieces to travel with.  Since I'm the only one to drink coffee, they never forget to bring me a cup in the morning.  Delma has been down stairs and when she came back, Debbie asked her if she had stopped by the desk to pick up information about today.  The look she got about choked us all up.

We are on the way to Lehman's Hardware for our first stop.  OH!  Mistake, our first stop was on the highway -- roadwork.  Jean says there is a 100 cars ahead of us.  First horse-drawn buggy in front of us.  Delma said he hit the "oh shit" line.  We are at Lehman's Hardware.  Just spent 2 hours in there.  Fascinating place.  Thank you, Larry.

Just went by big auction.  Lots of horse and buggy vehicles.  Stopping to get a bite to eat before going on.  Excitement while we were eating.  A motor tricycle came whizzing by backwards with no one on it. Almost got us.  Debbie even got excited as she saw it first.

Whoops!  Guess we are sight seeing too much; a truck is honking at us.  Lots of pretty shrubs and flowers up here.  Stopped and bought strawberries from little Amish girls to have tonight.  Toured Armish homes and barn; and took buggy ride.  Enjoyed it.  Now at Amish quilt store. 

On to the flea market.  Lots of things to see.

Now back a the hotel.  Girls have gone shopping to replenish water and things.  Jean and I are resting.  We are going on to New York in the morning.  Probably spend a couple of nights there.  Good night for me.

Debbie's Blog:

I caught everyone enjoying our complimentary continental breakfast this morning.  It was a great way to start the morning.

We have 2 things on our agenda this morning.  Drive to Lehman's Hardware and visit an Amish Farm....OK, 3.  I wanted to visit at a quilt shop.  We managed to do all 3.  Here are a few pictures:

This is the most amazing hardware store I've every seen.  It has everything.  Hardware, cooking utenstils, cooking stoves, heating stoves, quilts, books, lamps.  The list goes on and on.  The most fascinating thing for me were these refrigerators and stoves that have the look of antiques.  They were beautiful.  However, I guess you have to be rather smart to figure out how to open the oven.  I couldn't do it!  Aunt Carole had to show me how.

I kept trying to open the "small" door.  Guess what!  That's a fake front!  The door opens like a normal stove.  I felt better when I watched several other women do the same thing.  We all had a good laugh.

Here are my favorite things in the store:

We left there and headed to the Amish Farm for a tour of the 2 houses and the barn.  Before we got there, we decided to stop at this little place for 2 BBQ chicken sandwiches for $2.99.  Yep, we splurged for lunch.  Delma and I went in and got 4 sandwiches and a large bag of chips.  The total came to $6.93.  Not bad, huh? 

While we were eating lunch (sitting in Delma's car).  I saw this trike backing up right beside Delma's and Aunt Carole's side of the car.  I just about lost it when I realized no one was riding the trike.  Let me tell you a side story.  As the only smoker in the group, Delma always has to go outside to smoke.  Needless to say, she has meet many interesting folks.  At the Comfort Inn, she met 2 couples riding trikes.  Her first encounter with them was when she had to let them know one of the trailers (both trikes were pulling trailers) still had their key in the lock.  Since then, she's had some good conversations.  TODAY, she had to go back into the little store and let them know one of the trikes almost hit her car!  THEN later today, we ran into then again at a Flea Market.  I told them Delma wanted to know where they were parking this evening so she could avoid them.  We all had a good laugh.  Here's a picture of the trikes.

OK, now on to the Amish farm.  This is some beautiful country here.  We have enjoyed just riding through the country as much as anything else.  Here are a few pictures of the Yodar's Amish farm:

After touring the 2 houses and the barn, Aunt Carole and I took a buggy ride. 

That's it for Dover, OH, and the Amish folks.  We are off to Niagara Falls tomorrow.  We already have our motel reservations (finally) and will stay there 2 nights.  We have plans to go the Falls (of course), take the "Maiden of the Mist" boat tour, and whatever we discover around Niagara Falls. Then we plan to go to Lockport and take an Erie Canal cruise.  Another wonderful couple of days ahead.

I'll blog more tomorrow.