Between Intercourse and Paradise!

If you've been reading our blog, you'll KNOW that we've been having a superb time - but we bet that you didn't expect a blog with THIS title! No, this is not a case of 'too much information' - this is where we were yesterday! Intercourse and Paradise are two towns in Lancaster County, south-eastern Pennsylvania, the heart of the Amish country. For those of you who would rather focus on another interpretation, let us remind you that before you can go from Intercourse to Paradise, you first have to go to Bird in Hand ... it may be old-fashioned to call girls 'birds', but the sequence seems appropriate!

In the summer, we are told, it is almost impossible to move on the roads of Lancaster county for gawking tourists. On a warm, damp October day we were able to feel that we were visitors, and we carefully refrained from gawking. We both believe in complying with the wish of the Amish people that they should not be photographed, but managed to take some great shots of their buggies and horses - it's amazing to see a black buggy travelling amongst all the cars and semi-trailers, the horse proceeding at a smart clip that many old cars would envy and not at all intimidated by the traffic.

We lunched at a large, touristy restaurant, which specialised in Amish foods, and visited a general store and quilt shop in Intercourse, before heading back to the Bird in Hand farmers market. As well as the superb quilts, Frances was fascinated by the Amish dolls, which show no facial features, and John loved the old-fashioned wooden toys. Oh to have room in our cases for all the things we'd love to buy! Instead, we purchased a range of German-style cheeses and sausages (wursts), a sticky pecan loaf and farm-fresh eggs.

Today we've spent the day in Mechanicsburg PA (There's a lot of funnily-named burgs around here!) and can't believe the welcome that the locals give us as we wandered the attractive streets. The local barber, in a shop that hasn't been altered, except for the provision of electricity, since 1890, even insisted on giving us two mugs from the large collection on his walls! We visited a bar called 'The Gingerbread Man', talked to a fellow who spends his mornings in the family hardware store and his afternoons selling clothes 'from 1880 to 1980', and lunched at a cafe which had a working radio studio attached. Most houses are decorated for Halloween (does nobody ever steal the pumpkins sitting on the sidewalk beside the front steps?) and a large number display the American flag. The churches have tall white spires, there are yellow chrysanthemums in boxes beside the cute yellow fire hydrants, under falling showers of yellow leaves ... we can't help swivelling our heads to see if we're on a film set!

On a more prosaic note, we're still getting no emails (not even junk mail) on our usual address, so we're now using Frances' (fwindolf) mailbox at ********@une.edu.au Don't use the stars, of course - just fill in the name! This address is not for jokes, games, pictures, but if you want to send us a message, this appears to be the best way. For those who have sent messages to the blog about Queensland's rain, we hate to inform you that we've had no proper rain, and only 2 days with slight drizzle in our trip so far - we've had sun day after day, with occasional rain at night when we're safely inside. Someone, somewhere is looking after us!

History takes many forms!

Our joy in visiting present-day Pennsylvania (good friends, beautiful scenery, amazing autumn leaves) has been increased by looking back into the past. Over the last three days we've visited three VERY different museums.

The first was a tavern in Dillsburg, where we're staying with Colette and Bill. started in 1794 by James Dill (an Irishmen of unrecorded intelligence!), this stone building gave us a fascinating look back over life in the nineteenth century. It's a local museum, and is obviously very much loved. We enjoyed comparing it to early Australian buildings, but also enjoyed it for itself, and spent a wonderful afternoon there.

Today we visited two museums that couldn't have been more different. The 'National Apple Museum' in Biglerville Pennsylvania is in an old barn, and contains a large range of apple memorabilia, from apple peelers to songs about apples "Don't sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me" ... etc), to farm machinery and patchwork quilts. The gentleman (or was he an apple-tree gnome?) who showed us around was so passionate about apples that we thought we'd never get away, but his enthusiasm rubbed off on us so that we all enjoyed our unusual morning.

In the afternoon we visited the multi-million dollar Gettysburg National Military Park Museum, where we first watched a film narrated by Morgan Freeman, then ascended to view the most amazing cyclorama, over 40 ft (12 metres) tall and over 350 ft around, painted just after the battle. It was amazing! The museum itself, with memorabilia from the 3-day 1863 battle, was one of the best we've seen.

Then we followed our visit with a drive around the battlefield - green fields and thousands of Fall trees, interspersed by hundreds and hundreds of memorials. We've come away VERY impressed and very thoughtful. What a wonderful place!

Sports Report from John

BEE EEE AAA RRR SSS ... BEARS! ... BE EE AA RR SS ... BEARS! ... B E A R S ... BEARS!
I can recall every note of the Hershey Bears Ice Hockey team rallying call, even though it's nearly 21 hours since I was in the stadium - it's still ringing loudly in my ears. As you no doubt know, I've never been a great sports fan, and I've certainly never seen an ice hockey match, but I really enjoyed the extravaganza that I attended with Ken and Bill.

The match was divided into three sessions, each twenty minutes long, with twenty minutes between each session - they needed all that time to stock up on beers, sodas, hotdogs, fries, potato chips ... just enough food to keep them alive until the next break. The game was exciting for Hershey Bears fans (the Hershey chocolate headquarters was right next door) but not so good for the Adirondack Phantoms because the Bears won 5-0. Actually, it seemed to me that the main point of the game, for players and spectators alike, was who won the fights - those on the ice seemed to be fighting constantly - it was like a mix of hockey, ice-skating and World Championship wrestling, with every move, fight and all, described at 200 decibels over the loud speaker.

It was a great night - one to remember - think I prefer cricket, though - it's certainly more dignified!

Just briefly

For those wanting a travelogue, this blog will be unsatisfactory. Instead, we're experiencing life as small-town American citizens. We wake in the morning and eat pop-tarts for breakfast; we go to the store; we walk around town viewing the pumpkins, the decorations of scarecrows, cornstalks and autumn leaves; we go to the store; we watch the incessant mid-term election advertisements on TV (each one blatantly calling the opposition candidate a liar); we go out with our friends and a group of their friends for pizza; we come home and drink beer, whisky or wine and eat pretzels and potato chips -we even have a taste of real genuine moonshine! We've had a wonderful time in Portage, and tomorrow we move on to the other side of the Alleghennies - Ken and Janet will take us to stay with Janet's sister, Colette and her husband Bill.

We've enjoyed this week - it's been a holiday from holidaying - and we feel really relaxed. Our only concern is that none of our emails have come through for more than a week - but tonight we have two. If you've tried to contact us, will you please try again?

Tomorrow night John goes to an ice-hockey match with the boys, while we girls party ... watch this space for John's sports report - there'll be NO report from the girls!

Amtrak and Amish across America

We're writing this safely from the beautiful Alleghenny Mountains of Pennsylvania - the foothills look a little like Gippsland with extra autumn leaves - it's beautiful! Janet and Ken have made us so welcome, and none of us have stopped talking in 24 hours, except when we fell asleep after midnight.

After travelling so long, we were looking forward to catching up with our mail, but somehow Webmail is showing (yet again) that we have no mail - if you have mailed us in the last week, could you please resend it?? Thanks!

Travelling for so long? Yes, we just spent six days on the train - fortunately with two all-too-short overnight stops to sleep in hotels. We caught the Coast Starlight from San Luis Obispo to Emeryville near San Francisco last Wednesday, being thrilled to see Californian deer, mule deer and wild turkeys on our way. The next morning we left Emeryville for Chicago on the California Zephyr, and travelled from 10am Thursday until 5pm Saturday, through California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Nebraska (our 43rd state), Iowa and Illinois. Travelling through the Rockies was a never-to-be-forgotten experience, but the rest of the trip was wonderful too, and we really appreciated the loudspeaker commentary that told us the history and interesting aspects on the way. The glass-roofed viewing car was a wonderful place to view the scenery, and when we retired to our much-bigger-than-airline-style seats, with reclining backs, extendable leg rests, and pillows provided, we found that we slept soundly, too.

On Saturday morning, in Nebraska and Iowa, we picked up a number of Amish travellers - a family travelling to a funeral in Missouri, and a grandmother, her daughter, and children who had travelled west for medical reasons, and were now returning home. The eldest relatives in the funeral group were a couple who had never been on a train before - they lived 80 miles (120 km) from the Amtrak line - and who ket standing around looking totally dumb-founded! I had great fun teaching Martha the tricks of train toilets! The other family, Ellen - a 57 yo mother of ten children, and her daughter Rose, wore plain coloured dresses, not black, and white caps. They became friendly with us in the viewing car, and asked if they could sit with us when we transferred to the Cardinal in Chicago, for the 28 hour trip to Philadelphia. Ellen left in Kentucky, where relatives were waiting to bring Rose's eldest daughter to the train when Ellen left. That left Rose with three small children - Kayla aged 4, Amy aged 3, and Davon (a boy) who is nearly 2 - a big job for anyone to look after.

Sunday was a glorious day - we travelled right across West Virginia, beside the Kanawha River and its tributaries for much of the day - river boats, rapids, autumn leaves, steep mountain gorges etc - it was like a picturebook. Frances spent almost all day with two, or even three, delightful little Amish children (the girls in plain blue or green dresses, black boots and black bonnets, Davon in grey trousers with broad crossed straps, and a dark red shirt like his mother's dress) on her knee ... it was a delight. Davon called John 'grandfather', because of his beard, and his eyes twinkled as he lay back on John's lap and looked up at it. We were SO exhausted by the time we helped them disembark at Wilmington Delaware, and we slept like logs in Philadelphia.

Yesterday we went to see the Liberty Bell before catching the Philadelphian to Johnstown. We travelled through Lancaster, the area which most people link with the Amish, watching farmers plowing with a hand plough behind a horse, an Amish Wagon delivering visitors to a farm, long lines of Monday-morning washing reaching from the second-story to the ground (unusual in a country where everyone else uses electric driers). It was wonderful to see Janet again, and to meet Ken.

Today we went to see the place where Admiral Peary first to reach the North Pole (there's some controversy about that, but it seems right) was born. a few miles from Janet and Ken's home in Portage PA, and visited a mansion now owned by the Franciscans, to enjoy the beautiful gardens, before feasting on pumpkin pie icecream at a dairy farm that has a Halloween fair every year - the pumpkins were worth seeing. All of Portage, even the funeral directors' office, is decorated for Halloween - it's great fun!

From fast to SLO

Sunday was a melange of new experiences for us. We attended a Unitarian service with Tom and Neal - well, mainly with Tom, as Neal was outside helping people dye dozens of Peace T-shirts she'd screen printed. It was midday before we headed for the freeway, northwards from San Diego and past San Bernadino, at the back of Los Angeles. WOW! There were ten lanes of traffic - 5 each way - and sometimes more - all doing 80 miles an hour ... that's 130 kilometres an hour ... and every lane full of traffic all the time ... thousands and thousands of cars and trucks. We were almost glad that we had a largish SUV (4WD) as we drove like bats out of hell for two hours straight before we escaped near the San Gabriel mountains - a ski area just east of Los Angeles. There we stopped at the Mountain View Inn, beside one of the largest sand hills we've ever seen, and shared a plate of ... liver and onions! It seemed so un-American! Heading westwards, we drove beside the Edwards air force base, to Palmdale, where we supermarket shopped and booked in at a local Days Inn, totally wrung-out from our experiences in the fast lane.

Monday was totally different, as we drove along narrow country roads along the edge of the Sierra Madre, heading towards the coast. Our first impression was of the smog that continued to blanket the hills, even 150 kilometres (nearly 100 miles) from central Los Angeles. Our second impression was that we'd seen it all before, even though this was our first visit - we kept seeing scenes from every cowboy movie we ever saw. I'm quite sure I saw Victore Mature peering over a ridge, and Audie Murphy down in a gulch below (don't worry dears, if you're under 100 years old and can't remember these stars of the Wild West!).

It was delightful to arrive in the San Luis Obispo (SLO) area and meet up with our friends Anni and Bill. We'd visited them last year, but one visit is never enough - it's wonderful to feel that you're almost continuing the conversation left off at the end of the last visit. Like Neal and Tom, Bill and Anni are wonderful hosts, though we're all lacking sleep because we talk so far into the night - as well as being keen international tourists, they travelled the US for seven years, visiting every mainland state, including Alaska, and Canada, before settling down at Avila Beach. Yesterday we lunched at inland Templeton, at a wonderful restaurant in an old saloon - again it was just like a movie set - before visiting the SLO botanical garden.

Our bags are packed, we're ready to go ... this showbiz air is having an effect on us ... and today we set off on the first of six train-days. Today we return our SUV and travel by train to Emeryville, just inland from San Francisco, where we'll stay in a hotel overnight. Tomorrow we head for Chicago, via Salt Lake City, Colorado and Nebraska, our 43rd state. We're due to arrive on Saturday afternoon, and will then change trains and travel through Ohio, West Virginia (state #44) and Washington DC to Philadelphia, the next time we'll sleep in a bed, on Sunday night. On Monday we'll catch another train, this time heading west through Pennsylvania, to Johnstown, where Janet and Ken promise to be waiting for us among the autumn (fall!) leaves of the Alleghenny Mountains. Don't expect another blog for a week - but in the meantime, we hope that you're enjoying life as much as we are.

California - here we came

We have our feet on the ground! We're staying with friends Tom and Neal in a real house ... and we feel like real people, not like tourists! We loved being on the ship, and had a superb time, but real life is wonderful too.

Yesterday we sat out under the trees (LOTS of gum trees, some banksias and wattles, and lots of peppercorn trees (if you're a Victorian) or pepperinas (Queensland version) or Californian pepper trees - take your pick - and ate breakfast in the sun, dogs at our feet - life is good. Later Neal took us around a wonderful craft museum where she's a guide (they call it a docent) - Maddy, and Stephanie, would have adored the Zandra Rhodes clothing exhibition - it was brilliant. Lots of Mexican folk sculpture (celebrating Mexico's bi-centennary) and Romanian embroidery, too. We lunched at the wonderful museum complex, watched brides posing around the interesting buildings, all built for a World Expo in the 1930s - just a great day out with friends.

Now we're off to dye Peace T-shirts, and join the Biggart family at the Unitarian church, then wander our way northwards in the SUV we've hired - it was meant to be a compact car, but that's life! Interesting sidelight - collection of the car was held up because no-one could get the electronic locks to work - it turned out that the nuclear US Navy carrier in the port had blocked all electronic signals in that wavelength!

Back to land means back to facebook, too - it;s great to hear everybody's news - Congratulations to Michael and Tammy on their engagement, commiserations to Jess, whose pet Crush is no more, good luck to Bronwyn - and thanks to all the others for snippets of news.

Back to the real world ... almost!

This will be our last blog from the ship, and we're actually writing from within sight of San Diego, although we can't go ashore ... we, and everyone else on the Carnival Spirit, will travel to Mexico overnight, then "debark" (isn't that a ghastly Americanism? We still say "disembark", to ourselves!) in a town called Ensenada. From there all 2200 passengers (no, that must be 2199 - see below) then get onto buses and travel to ... wait for it ... San Diego! You see, we're all bound by a US law called the Jones Act, which says that every Jones, Smith, Brown, Obama ??, and Windolf must visit at least one overseas port on every cruise - and as we've sailed from Hawaii, the 49th state, we have to go to Mexico. The reason that we diverted via San Diego today is because one passenger had a heart attack, so we sailed to San Diego, watched her carted off to hospital, then continued on to Mexico.

We have loved our time on this ship - very different from our cruise on the Carnival Splendor last year, partly because the ship is smaller, but also because the passengers have changed three times. The special thing, for the two of us, is the way that we have been "adopted" by the staff and crew - they count us as part of the team, and we've been constantly bombarded with wine, chocolates, fruit - last night all our favourite dining room staff gave us a beautiful hand made card, full of messages, and a photo frame they had bought for us - please can we take them back to Oz with us?

After we leave the ship tomorrow (we refuse to type THAT word again!) we collect a hire car and drive around Southern California for 5 days, visiting 3 lots of friends, near San Diego and near San Luis Obispo. Then we'll catch a train next Wednesday (Thursday Aussie time) to travel to Pennsylvania, via Chicago.

We'll be in touch after our 'land legs' get back in training.

It's a hard life - or is it?

Here we are, back at sea - having a hard time fitting in all the things we want to do. We start in the early morning, watching the Aussie dollar rise against the US dollar (we LIKE that!), then go down for breakfast - we could go up, to the Lido, but find that it's much more civilised in the dining room, and we eat less than at the buffet - it's much easier to say "No" to a menu! From there we return to our room - cleaned for the first time for the day - it will be totally done again while we're at dinner - then parade around the deck for exercise, stopping to chat as we go. We appear to be two of only four Aussies on this particular cruise - would you believe that the others have a grandaughter/niece who teaches at Coolum High School - it's a small world!

A spell by the pool leads to conversation - and then it's lunch time. Back to the dining room - seafood for Frances, a chinese pepper steak salad for John, and a visit from the captain, wandering around for a chat ... much more welcome than the wandering magician, who's a bit of a dill! An afternoon nap for John, while Frances tries to catch up with some uni work, then it's back to the deck. Today Frances and John (known as Jack) invited us to their suite at the rear of the ship, where we enjoyed their huge private balcony, sheltered from the wind - the side balconies are attractive, but tend to be windy. We followed this with attendance at a Past Guest's party - more food, free cocktails - we try to be very moderate, but it's hard - before changing for dinner. Crab legs and chicken in a truffle sauce for Frances, hazelnut crusted camembert for John, followed by rare roast beef, then a souffle for Frances and fruit & cheese for John ... please note that we only have one starter each - some of the people around us have three starters before their main course!

We're catching up on our emailing now (All our emails have suddenly disappeared!! If you've sent a message in the last few days, please could you resend it?) before we go to a show, equal to anything we'd pay $70 a ticket for at home ... oh, and we forgot to mention the chocolate coated strawberries, each one in a white chocolate 'shirt' and a dark chocolate 'coat' and 'bow tie' that were waiting in our cabin, a gift from the Hotel Manager.

What's hard about this life? Well, we are missing you all - and Theodora the cat - and we've only 2 days before we have to pack - AND we have to make plans about losing weight when we disembark! Sorry if we've made you jealous - we know that life on land is good too!

Aloha also means goodbye - unfortunately!

Well, our two weeks in Hawaii is over - although I've still got flowers in my hair, and John has shells around his neck, ready to say a final "Aloha". We've really enjoyed Hawaii, partly through the tours we've done - yesterday we travelled by bus 10,000 ft up the Haleakala volcano (Mt Kosciusko is only 7,000 ft!) - but also with the things that we've done as individuals. Last week we drove around Maui, and loved it, this week we visited the superb Bishop Museum in Honolulu, and the royal palace (all 6 rooms!) in Kailua, Kona, which displayed absolutely superb furniture and artifacts. Today we went to the Maui County Fair! We enjoyed looking at rabbits, donkeys, cattle, poultry etc, wandering past the food stalls (we DID resist the deep-fried chocolate bars!!), and watching the kids enjoying the huge number of games and rides on the Midway - there were NO sample bags! - but best of all we enjoyed the entertainment of Hawaiian songs and hula, which was superb. Now we have to say "Aloha" to Hawaii, and our thoughts are already extending to the next part of our trip, although we plan to continue enjoying every last minute of our cruise, while we can.

On a sad note, we want to say "Aloha" to Frances' cousin Peter, who died suddenly after Saturday's AFL grand final - our thoughts are with his family.

Maholo (Thank you) Hawaii - you have been so generous to us.