Lancaster County is most everything you might hope, but with a layer of over-commercialization. I’m not clear on how much of this is non-Amish trading on people’s interest in the Amish culture, or Amish trading on Amish. Buggies pulled by trotting horses pass through town every few minutes usually driven by a woman, or perhaps a mother with her children. Other buggies stand by offering rides for a fee (“Abe’s Buggy Rides”).
The main streets in villages like Bird-in-Hand are crowded with female tourists wandering through countless quilting-oriented shops, accompanied by polite but bored husbands. Marcia and I usually beat this by splitting and agreeing to meet at a particular time, which allows me to get bored on my own and Marcia doesn’t have to endure my pithy impatient observations.
Bird-in-Hand, supposedly named for an early tavern with a sign showing a bird-in-hand (few could read then), seems to be the center of all this. The street is lined with small shops, but everything is dominated by Kitchen Kettle Village, which takes up at least a half-block including parking space for cars, tour buses and RVs. It even has an olde fudge shoppe (“Our Fudge Doesn’t Melt”).
For lunch we wished to try some Amish food. After wandering around the Bird-in-Hand we settled on a large restaurant our campground receptionist recommends. Disappointingly, there were only two items on the menu designated as typically Amish, one was Macaroni and Cheese (who knew?) which I ordered: it was OK) and I don’t remember the other. Marcia ordered a sandwich of some sort. The Amish experience devolved into watching an Amish employee bus dishes back and forth faster than you can imagine, and she looked at least 90. (Later we learned Kitchen Kettle owns the restaurant, our campground, probably the 90-year-old lady, and who knows what else. This strengthened Marcia’s belief that all businesses everywhere are owned by only twelve large corporations.)
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