Horses and Trains

During our stay in the beautiful Hershey, Pennsylvania area, we traveled down into Lancaster County, a.k.a., Amish Country. We definitely wanted to go for a ride on the famous Strasburg Rail Road, featuring a real coal-burning engine and a short ride through the countryside. Adam loves trains and enjoyed the ride immensely, even though he was suffering with a fever. Tessa had a lot of fun too, and, a month later, still talks about eating Daddy's brownie. We rode in the first-class car with its plush green seats.

The actual train ride was pretty short, less than forty minutes all told. We did get to see several Amish carriages and a couple of Amish farmers plowing the land with teams of horses. Hard work. Definitely worth doing if you are in the area. (The train-riding, not the plowing.)

Right across the street from the train station is the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania. Inside the museum there are over fifty engines from wood- and coal-burners to more modern diesel engines. We talked to one of the guides, who, it was clear, loved trains. He kindly gave us a mini-tour and answered our questions. We were disappointed that we couldn't stay and take his tour, but we ran out of time. A visit to the museum is highly recommended!

On our way back to Hershey, we took a horse-drawn wagon ride. Adam and I got to sit on the front bench with the driver, who, although not Amish himself, had some interesting observations about his neighbors who were. Mommy and Tessa sat in the back, which was fine with Tessa, who was at first somewhat scared of the horses. She warmed up to them later when the driver introduced them as George and Ricky. Ricky was the fast one and George the slow one. The twins are still talking about them.

The top picture is the twins at the railroad museum. The train they are looking at is a wood-burner. You can tell by the funnel-shaped chimney on the engine, so said the guide. Then there are two pictures I took on the steam train ride. Below are two pictures taken on the horse ride.