Bucolic Pennsylvania and upstate New York

     While driving through the bucolic farmland of Quarryville, Pennsylvania this week, there were many Amish and Old Order Mennonite farms on the Robert Fulton Highway to admire. I'm no stranger to farms, having been raised on a nearby Lancaster County poultry farm myself, but at age 63 I'm a lot wiser now than when I was thirteen years old.  Since owning a horse in Texas during the last decade, I now realize that horses require alot of training, care, attention, and respect. So when I saw this thirteenish year old boy maneuvering two large horses forward, backward, sideways, plus the manual mower controls, on a pasture with a medium high-banked creek that he couldn't cross, I watched with total admiration.

 

     From late in life personal experience, I now realize that a horse resting and happily eating grass in the pasture doesn't want to work too hard. It will resist being caught. Once caught, the laborious haltering, saddling and harnessing work begins. The Amish often use two, three, and four horses together, backing them up to a piece of machinery or a buggy, and then they put their life in the hands of herd-instinctive animals trained to be bomb-proof. It's a lifestyle most of us can't begin to grasp anymore. But only 150 years ago, this was the norm for Americans.

     From southeastern Pennsylvania, I was on my way to the border town of Columbia, New Jersey to fill up my diesel fuel tank for fifty-cents per gallon cheaper than Pennsylvania. I stopped at an Appalachian Trailhead along the highway at the PA/NJ border to walk and stretch my legs.

     From there, I drove the scenic and narrow Old Mine Road for the rest of the afternoon. I found an Appalachian Trail head parking lot near Buttermilk Falls to pull over for a pleasant night of sleep.

     The next morning I drove on secondary roads in New York that offered wonderful views of a winery and farms with "Land O'Lakes supplier" signs at their long driveways . . . . 

and stopped at Port Jervis, a cute little mountainous town where I had a good breakfast for $2.50 and skipped the tour of the old fire station across the street.

Monticello, New York, has a race track for trotters, known as harness racing. It was difficult to get a non-blurry photo of these fast trotters!

     And at the end of the day, I found myself on peaceful Frost Valley Road which is named after a German native and entrepreneur from the turn of the 19th Century Julius Forstmann.

     Mr. Forstmann's mansion now belongs to the Frost Valley YMCA. At each stop in a little village in The Catskills area, I could begin to understand its "rich" history. Not only the millionaires who made their mark during the turn of the 19th Century, but also its proximity to inhabitants of New York City who were looking for natural resources, outdoor recreation and rural culture. The very same things I seek!