Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
A good spot to get an inside look at their enduring simplicity is the Old Country Store
in the town of Intercourse, where the handcrafted dioramas of folk artist Aaron Zook bring
tolifeabarn-raising,anAmishfuneral,and“buggycourting.”AcrossthestreetistheQuilt
Museum, filled with walls draped with dozens of antique classics.
A couple of miles west on Rte. 340 toward Bird-in-Hand, a village named for a tavern
that served the Old King's Highway some 200 years ago, is the Plain and Fancy Farm,
where you can depart for the Witness Movie Covered Bridge Tour. Bring along your
camera as you follow in the actor Harrison Ford's footsteps and tour the farm where
the 1985 movie
Witness
was filmed. Afterward the tour takes you through three histor-
ic covered bridges and some rarely traveled backroads of southern Lancaster. Tours leave
twice weekly from the Amish Experience Theatre, located on the Plain and Fancy Farm.
InnearbyWitmerthe18th-centurybuildingsoftheFolkCraftCenterandMuseumcon-
taindisplaysoflocalhomearts,fromstonewarepotstoStiegelglass.Nearby,youcanclip-
clop lazily on a two-mile buggy tour of Amish country.
2.
Ephrata Cloister
Head north on Rte. 772 through a checkerboard of fertile farms, and then turn right on
Rte. 272 to arrive at the medieval-style compound of the Ephrata Cloister, the monastic
Seventh-Day Baptists, followersofConradBeissel, whoimmigrated fromGermanynearly
300 years ago. Here they built austerely beautiful clapboard buildings with tiny dormer
windows—a style borrowed from the traditional houses of their native Rhineland. Known
as the Society of the Solitary, they slept on hard benches with wooden blocks for pillows.
Narrow hallways symbolized the straight and narrow path, and the low doorways (even
short visitors have to duck) reminded sect members of humility. Beissel, who called their
rigors “serenity,” rests among the mossy stones of the old graveyard.
3.
Landis Valley Village & Farm Museum
As you drive toward Lancaster on Rte. 272, stop three miles north of town at the Landis
Valley Village & Farm Museum, where the numerous exhibits include a post-Civil War
schoolhouse and the early-19th-century Landis Farmstead. Some 80,000
items—everything from potbelly stoves to cigar-store Indians to Conestoga wagons (built
in Lancaster County)—make this one of the world's largest museums focusing on the
Pennsylvania Dutch. Farm animals roam the grounds, and you can watch demonstrations
of blacksmithing, weaving, and open-hearth cooking.
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