Intercourse is not how I remember it

Intercourse is not what it used to be. For quite a while I was telling Deb all about how unique and special Intercourse was. She was definitely looking forward to it and was also really excited about visiting Paradise, Bird-in-hand, Virginville, and all the other Amish communities just east of Lancaster, PA so we set our sights on visiting the area on our way to northern, MD where I grew up.

We stayed in a park near Paradise just off of Hwy 30 southwest of Intercourse. Our first day in the area we traveled about 30 miles west to Hershey, PA to visit the chocolate factory. I have some great childhood memories of the area and it was our family trip to Hershey in 1970 when the photographers from Life Magazine followed my family around to do the story in their August 1970 magazine. Adjacent to the chocolate factory, there is also “Hershey Park” which is a theme park with roller coasters and all the other features to make kids happy. It was closed for the season but a huge car show was taking place in the parking lot for the theme park so traffic was heavier than we expected.

We toured the chocolate factory on a little ride which reminded me of “It’s a small world” at Walt Disney World. The ride with the singing dairy cows was not at all like the walk thru tour that I remember from my youth but it was informative. It ended at, of all places, the gift shop which was chocked full of everything chocolate plus chocolate themed t-shirts, hats, pajamas, etc. We walked out with only six bags of stuff, all of it edible which, at first, did not help alleviate the overloading problem that we have in our trailer.

On day two we decided to drive the roads from town to town in the Amish area east of Lancaster intending to do a little shopping as well as sampling all of the goodies that we could find . In bumper to bumper traffic, we drove to Bird-in-Hand and stopped at a very busy market. At the first shop that we stopped in, Deb turned something over uncovering a “made in China” sticker. Everything in the shop was the same crap that you could find in any gift shop in any tourist area in the country. Having been turned off by the experience, we hopped in the truck and headed towards Intercourse (still bumper to bumper). Several miles down the road, there were signs for a huge yard sale and we noticed smoke billowing across the road up ahead. When we got to the yard sale, we saw that it was an Amish family who not only had their “junk” for sale but barbequed chicken (hence the smoke), baked goods and cold drinks so we decided to stop.

Of all the things that we did in that area, that was the highlight of our trip. We visited with various family members, watched the boys play catch, ate the best chicken that we’ve tasted in years, purchased fresh produce to take home and learned a little bit about the people that we really came to see.

Sunday we drove a lot of back roads, took pictures of some cool old barns, houses, and covered bridges and at one point came upon a home that had about 40 carriages in the yard along with a stable of horses that could pull a dozen Budweiser wagons. It was obviously the local Sunday meeting place and I would have loved to have stopped and taken pictures but there was a man in the yard tending to the horses and, besides the fact that they don’t want their pictures taken, I didn’t want to be an interruption or distraction on their day of prayer.

Some things change for the better but one thing that I know for certain is that the Amish area, as well as the beautiful people who made the area both famous and unique in Lancaster County has been irreparably harmed by tourism that grew up around, and now within their community.