Heading for Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Today we started the morning in Kane, PA.  We spent the night in the Kane Manor Inn, much to my disappointment I didn’t meet any ghosts, so managed to get a reasonable night sleep.  Mike also managed a reasonable nights sleep considering he has a pretty bad cold.  Peter on the other hand I believe was up reading at 1am, maybe he managed to meet a ghost.  

After a bit of breakfast it was on the road for us, we managed to leave before 9am, plenty of driving to be done today.  First stop is Heirloom Quilting & Antiques in Brookville, my first quilting store of the trip, they open at 10am so want to be there for opening.  The weather wasn’t great, the rain had arrived and was pretty settled in.  We made it to the store for opening.  I am so overwhelmed with the selection of fabric and notions that I decided not to purchase anything.  Oh how I could have purchased the whole store though!  The price of fabric is so much better here than NZ, I think that extra suitcase is going to be full by the end of the trip!!!

Next we took a small detour to the town of Punxustawney which is where the real Groundhog Day occurs each year. Oddly enough the movie was not filmed there. Punxustawney Phil, the groundhog, is kept on display at the public library. We want to say hello but he was hiding away up the back, fast asleep.

u

We also went to Gobbler's Knob, just a few miles out of town up a hill, where the actual Groundhog Day event takes place. It's very well setup with a stage, they sure do take this seriously.

 

From Punxustawney we headed to Covered Bridge Rd, Mahaffey, to see, you guessed it, out first Covered Bridge of the trip.  The drive is only 50 minutes from Brookville.  We are rather surprised at the amount of trees in this part of Pennsylvania, it is forest after forest and the trees are beginning to turn already.  The roads are full of old homes, in what seems to be the middle of nowhere, we wonder were these people get there income from, there isn’t any farming around, and the towns are very small.  I am enjoying seeing a different side of the USA, driving off the interstates is great.  The Covered Bridge is amazing, I guess we will see more on our travels but I can’t get over how rustic it is, the sound of the stream running below, the typical red sides and white roof, it's just like a movie. It seems to also get a bit of traffic over it. 

The rain was setting in again so time to move on, we were heading for Lancaster, Pennsylvania and we still have another 3.5 hours of driving to get to the hotel.

The drive to Lancaster is pretty uneventful, with one minor stop at McDonald’s to use the facilities, grab a bit to eat and more importantly use their free internet.  Mike and I did exchange of driving and snoozing over the 3 hours, it would seem both of us didn’t get as much sleep as we thought last night. For the most part will spend more time on this leg of the trip on the interstates, if only our roads were as good at home as these, it makes the trip so easy.  By the time we start to arrive around Lancaster the scenery is beginning to change and is looking more farm like.  With any luck tomorrow might see better weather and we can go visit the Amish people.