On the Map: Laid Back in Lancaster County (PA)
By Mark McNease
On the Map is a travelogue of places, restaurants and landscapes for your travel considerations. Sometimes near, sometimes far, always interesting.
The frequent sight of horse-drawn buggies clopping and rolling along the roads is a perfect image for Lancaster’s life in the slow lane. This is Amish country, something you don’t have to verify with a Google search because the evidence is all around you: in the buggies crisscrossing the roads, in the clotheslines with daily wash fluttering in the breeze, in the houses without electricity or cars. It’s a way of life that can be appreciated without being romanticized: the lives the Amish choose to live are not easy. They may look simple, folksy and nostalgic, but they are lives of toil and prayer. That’s my caveat – to remember when you visit that beneath the calm, relaxed surface of this country life are days of work from sunup to sundown, and a chosen detachment from the lives most of us live.
My husband Frank and I recently took our third trip to the Strasburg/Lancaster area. Frank had been there before we met, but it was all new to me. Three years ago he took me there for a surprise trip and we stayed at the Red Caboose Motel, where each room is a caboose salvaged from trains that stopped running long ago. There are small cabooses, medium-size cabooses, and large ones that can accommodate big families or friends traveling in groups. There’s a restaurant on the property, Casey Jones Restaurant, set in a replica of a dining car, with an attached gift shop. (We ate there on Monday, since it was one of the few places open that night.) I loved the novelty of it all, but there are a LOT of horse flies! Each room/caboose includes a fly swatter, and you will use them. This is not just Amish country … it’s horse country, too.
We won’t likely be back to the Red Caboose, but we found a hotel that suits us very well. The Carriage House at Strasburg has been around quite a while and gone through a change or two in ownership. The current proprietors have made it comfortable, clean, and quite affordable.
Strasburg isn’t a very large town, and we could walk it easily from the hotel. Directly across the street is the Speckled Hen, a popular local restaurant and coffee shop that serves killer breakfasts, as well as lunch and dinner on select days. It was my first destination in the morning, to pick up coffee and pastry before starting our days – and returning for a proper breakfast! The Carriage House provides a money saving coupon to guests, in our case $7 off for each of us. You can’t beat that, or the food.
It was especially nice to be back as the country begins to emerge from pandemic restrictions. It’s as if we’re all coming out of a necessary but prolonged hibernation, and beginning to re-experience what we once called our normal lives.
The area is a pleasant and unusual mix of the old and new: the Amish way of life, mixed with a more artistic, inclusive culture exemplified by places like the Speckled Hen. Bohemia meets the old country, so to speak.
If you want to explore things to do and learn about the Amish lifestyle, check out Discover Lancaster. You can also find a broad range of suggestions at Trip Advisor.
One of our activities I hadn’t considered before this trip and highly recommend, is the amazing range of walking, biking and hiking trails in the area. We took long walks both days we were there, each in a very different setting. The countryside is beautiful, and the trails are extremely well maintained. If you like to walk or bike, you’ll be in heaven.
Even if we didn’t have friends there, Strasburg and Lancaster are destinations we’ll return to again and again. It’s less then a two hour drive for us. We’ve found much to like about our getaways there, and nothing to dislike (except the horse flies). Add this one to your trip list, you won’t regret it.