Learn me Lancaster, Pa

Dutch Wonderland.  Cool little amusement park.  Very nice and excellent for young children.  My son rode the biggest, baddest rollercoaster they had when he was like 8 years old.  He found it mildly scary at the time, but he'll ride anything now.  Even stuff you couldn't pay me to get on.

As long as we're on the subject of amusement parks. 

Knoebels.

https://www.knoebels.com/

Not sure how close this is to Lancaster, but Knoebels (pronounced kuh-no'-bulls) is an experience you should have.   Free parking, no admission to get into the park.  Buy ride tickets and food as you see fit.  And they've got some unique and excellent coasters.  Wonderful.  I can't say enough good things about the place.  Best amusement park ever!

I lived 30 years in Lancaster. I did everything on the list, practically. 

It's hard for me to recommend anything because I see it all as "I was bored and needed to do something different" vs actually wanting to be there. 

If I had a month off and had to entertain myself in my old stomping grounds I'd spend a lot of time paddling and floating down waterways - something that doesn't much exist in the southwest. 

The Gast car museum in Strasburg...there's an interesting tidbit. Unbeknownst to me, Jeff Gast is a relative of mine. An uncle somehow. I visited the museum not knowing that at the time. My mom later told me, "Oh, Jeff is related to us". I missed out on a deluxe private tour, I suppose. It's now an Amish furniture store. What I got through the grapevine was that it wasn't financially a success but it also was a time suck he decided he didn't want. He still dabbles in buying/selling cars. It originally was a much smaller place on the east side of New Holland.

The Tucker was a 'coup', a case of buying the right car at the right time. I think Jeff got it right before the movie came out and it was a major draw. I googled and found this posted 5 years ago on Hemmings forum:

"The Waltz Blue Tucker that was at the Gast Museum was car #1024 and is now owned and displayed by the Speedway Motors Museum of American Speed in Lincoln, Nebraska."

The Eastern Museum of Motor Racing is a fun stop. About an hour or so west of Lancaster.

Eastern Museum of Motor Racing – EMMR

Another nice stop is the Swigart Museum.  Although it's a fair distance from Lancaster, there are some nice driving roads in the area.  Not a big museum, but they have TWO Tuckers.

Swigart Museum

In reply to ddavidv :

Small world! 
I have lots of priceless memories of that place, and staring at cars on their turntable. 
I want to say they had the last US MGB in the collection as well. 

Duke said:

Well, I was going to chime in, but others have covered it pretty well.  I must say I'm astounded and amazed at making the Shady Maple your honeymoon destination.  After you've gorged yourself silly, don't forget to go downstairs to the equally-gigantic gift shop and bask in all the cheesy Americana you can imagine, let alone take in.

You should definitely go to Dutch Wonderland which is a small amusement park on the main drag outside Lancaster.  It's fairly tatty at this point but it's got a lot of heart. 

In my family we always called it "Dutch Disneyland" because in its prime it always seemed to be a tiny, weird, 20-years-behind, Pennsylvania Dutch copy of Disneyland.

There is a ton of shopping in the area, both generic 'factory outlet' malls and smaller, more handcrafted vendor village type things.

 

And I literally cam here to say Dutch Wonderland , spend my first ten years about an our away and went there a few times as a kid.

1988RedT2 said:

As long as we're on the subject of amusement parks. 

Knoebels.

https://www.knoebels.com/

Not sure how close this is to Lancaster, but Knoebels (pronounced kuh-no'-bulls) is an experience you should have.   Free parking, no admission to get into the park.  Buy ride tickets and food as you see fit.  And they've got some unique and excellent coasters.  Wonderful.  I can't say enough good things about the place.  Best amusement park ever!

Knoebels is our favorite amusement park by far.  It's such a great atmosphere and they don't take advantage of you like the other ones, especially if there's 1 or more people in your family that isn't huge on rides.  We're 4 hours away in CT and we still take the kids back there.

Saron81 said:

In reply to ddavidv :

Small world! 
I have lots of priceless memories of that place, and staring at cars on their turntable. 
I want to say they had the last US MGB in the collection as well. 

You are correct!

Gast was one of my favorite places as a kid. Bought many 1:18 scale Bburago models there (and still have them!). I loved the Tucker and the Lamborghini Countach they had. 

IIRC in downtown there is a repair shop that had some classic and exoticish cars last time I drove through a couple years ago. It was closed when we walked by but fun to look in the windows. 

Thanks for the reminder of Gast, I we stopped there on some 'mini-vacation' as a kid and remember the Tucker. Been a long, long time so I had no clue where I saw it.

We made it out today. Nice ride even on the turn pike. Great view

Sunday afternoon/evening is really a dead time for the area, so we ate at the hotel and played some mini golf. 

Getting a proper Amish breakfast tomorrow, going to Turkey hill for the tour, and hitting silver maple for dinner. 

I'm not used to seeing lights on the Amish buggies. None of the ones I've seen closer to home have them that I noticed before. Turn signals, flashers, and head lights. They have certainly embraced LED technology. But leaves me wondering, is there a dynamo on the axle charging a battery or are they using panels somewhere?

You nailed it... alternator on the axle.

They sometimes have a battery, but not always.  The Amish have found very creative ways around the "fancy" restrictions depending on the sect.  If you go south of where you are toward Duke in DE, they are a bit more conservative.  Driving through that area between Lancaster/Gap/Wilmington can be very slow on a Sunday.

State laws have begun to infringe a bit more on the Amish for road vehicles.  They have become a bit more adventerous with their tech.

But who cares.... THIS IS A BIG CELEBRATION! 

We have enough accidents with them having the lights, I can't imagine them without. I do have to say some of them have very bright headlamps. Probably worse then the brodozer crowd.

PS stop posting on the internet during your honeymoon, unless she is into it too, who am I to judge.

So yea, Shady Maple. I've been to bigger and better buffets, but not at that price point. I seemed to have terrible timing. I'd grab somethng and put it on my plate, turn around, and someone was replacing it with fresher stuff. The steaks were kinda tough, the brisket looked great but tasted dry, my fried chicken was old. Surprisingly the short ribs were perfect though. 

Visited Turkey Hill experience. Even without the kids it was pretty great. Make your own flavor, design the packaging, make a commercial if you wanted, and they uploaded everything onto the internet for you so you can share it later. Unlimited tea, lemonade, and ice cream samples too. They make an orange tea that is amazing, shame I live in Turner Dairy land. 

Tomorrow the weather is supposed to be E36 M3, so we're going shopping and hoping for a break in the rain to play some more minigolf somewhere else. There aren't any close to home, but if I can find some land cheep enough...

Also, it turns out I do not like shoo fly pie. 

Herrs isn't doing tours currently, we might spring for a rainy buggy ride though. 

Before we leave Wednesday we're going back to the meat store and hitting some farmers markets. 

I have walked more in the last week than o have in the past month combined according to Samsung health, so, positives for all the gorging we're doing on rich delicious food.

did splurge a little bit and got a new chef's knife though. 9.5 inch apogee dragon fire

Utz is still doing tours, about an hour from Lancaster, if it's a lousy weather day, worth the hour. Hershey car museum is 30 mins from you, could even do a Lancaster, Hanover, Hershey loop and kill a few hours  

Wait it's your honeymoon? You'll absolutely have to visit Intercourse as you're in the area. It may be one of the few times you get the chance to. 

In reply to captdownshift (Forum Supporter) :

That's where I got the knife. And we're heading back there tomorrow and again before we leave. 

Swung through Blue Ball on the way to dinner, I'm keeping an eye out for Virginville though. 

The intercourse meat store is amazing.

In reply to ddavidv :

TIL that The Boys visited Lancaster County.

That looks like back when it was Top Gear. Anyone have an idea of which season?

In reply to RevRico :

It was 08-09ish iirc. They stopped at Capitol dragway in Crofton MD as well on a rather rainy day. I was legitimately impressed that they didn't collect a wall. Then they made it the long way up to Lancaster county, crossing the bay bridge and going up the eastern shore then heading west, instead of 97/695/83 

Hey, train guys. I'm eating dinner in a caboose tonight, actually waiting on the food now.

oh, and you can spend the nights in these cars.

Red caboose motel and restaurant.

It's next door to the national toy train museum and 10 minutes ish from Strasbourg rail museum, and Choo Choo toy trains, with 1700 square feet of model train setup.

I'm glad that you're getting to enjoy Intercourse as much as you can during the honeymoon, you're going to miss it. 

Strasburg is cool. 

Hit up Roots Markets or Green Dragon in Ephrata. Both I feel like are unique to Lancaster County. Probably the #1 thing I miss from home is all the fresh produce.

ddavidv said:

East Coast road trip special, between series 15 and 16, original air date 2010. 

Finishing up our time here today with Bird in hand farmers market, intercourse meat store, and a vineyard before heading back. 

I'll do a bigger write up and picture dump either on the ride home or when we get back and I can use a computer