A Trip to Amish Country...

We took a group from our church (including John Wesley) to the airport in Columbus to catch a flight to HAITI for a mission trip.  Harold and I decided to take the opportunity to make it into a roadtrip--just the two of us, after we dropped the group off at the airport!!!  (Thanks to Mom and Dad for watching the kids for us!  You are such a blessing to us!)   The first thing we did was stop off at the rental company and rented a car.

Then we were off to Lehman's!  I've been wanting to go for a while now and I wasn't disappointed!  The sheer amount of STUFF was almost overwhelming, but it was all so interesting.  I actually didn't buy much at all.  Just a couple clearance kitchen things and a few things for the kids.  Oh...and a book with lots of goat's milk recipes!  Hopefully that will get lots of use in a few weeks after the kids are weaned and/or sold!

We loved seeing all the buggies parked everywhere.

And the bicycles...

The Amish farms are so beautiful and well-kept, almost manicured.

Being spring, everything was so green and fresh and pretty!

It was interesting to see these milk cans at the end of several driveways.

I took the next picture through the windshield.  We were amazed that these young girls, probably the age of Lena or a little younger, were riding this little buggy, pulled by a tiny Shetland pony, down one of the main roads of this community.  See the hills?  Imagine if a car or truck came up over the hill too quickly and they couldn't see the buggy until too late?  Ugh. 

The Amish have their own schools and in order to support them (pay the teachers, buy textbooks, pay for up-keep on the school house, etc) they have auctions.  I'd have loved to had the opportunity to go to one!

Amish boys, around 12 and 14 years old, delivering milk jugs.

It's interesting to me, as someone who doesn't trust horses, to see how apparently well-behaved and well-trained all the horses were. 

Another view of the same boys delivering their milk.

We made a pit stop at this bakery!  That was probably a mistake.  They had samples of EVERY thing available.  By the time we left we had probably had our daily allotment of calories!

Daily allotment, notwithstanding...we headed across the street to this cheese factory.  We got to see cheese actually being made.  They also had samples of EVERY kind of cheese (probably around 100 kinds).   Their tagline is, "Where the Cheese is Made."  Harold threatened to go in and ask the workers, "Who CUTS the cheese?"  I threatened him severely enough that he did not do that!

Some of the buggies were closed like the ones above and some were open like this one.  I'm sure it has to do with differences in the Amish orders.  I assume there are several separate communities within this area.

Harold and I stopped and spent a while looking around in an antique mall. 

Then we needed to start back toward Columbus.  It was a gorgeous drive, so peaceful.

On our way back to Columbus to get our bus, we passed the Longaberger headquarters.  I had always heard about the basket-shaped building.  Sure enough, there is was.

The perfect ending to a perfect outing...P.F. Changs!  Yum!

After our late dinner, we tried to find a hotel.  No luck for the first two hours or so.  I'm not sure what was going on in the area, but we had a terrible time finding a room.  When we finally did, we were so thankful.  We had been up, by that point, for just a few hours short of 48 hours.  That's a long time for us old folks!