Driving Home Through Amish Country
I’m back after spending three days with the in-laws in Amish Country. Did you miss me? I loved coming home to all the comments you left while I was gone. I hope you had a great weekend, and that the weather wherever you are was as gorgeous for you as it was for us (sunny, 70s).
My husband’s parents (who are Baptist, not Amish, btw) live in Elkhart, Indiana, and the back roads we take to get there are always scenic.
It’s like stepping back in time to see the rows of simple white farmhouses, the red barns, the women in bonnets and long dresses, the men in suspenders, and all the horses and buggies. My daughter Lily is crazy in love with horses, so she wore herself out pointing them out to us today.
There are the clothes lines like this one outside every house (the Amish don’t use anything that requires electricity, so washers and dryers are out). They mostly wear blue, black, and white clothes, as you can see on the line.
I snapped some photos as we drove home today to show you. One picture was taken through our bug-splattered windshield, and it’s not going to win any photography awards, that’s for sure. In the interest of truth in advertising, I should probably call this post “Julia’s Crappy Photos from Amish Country.”
But who knows? Maybe some of you have always wanted to see what Northern Indiana looks like through a dirty windshield. This post is for you.
We saw a lot of horse-drawn buggies like this one today, but this is the only one I managed to get a picture of fast enough as it trotted past. I can’t imagine riding in these open carriages in the heart of the winter, but they do.
This boy and girl were playing with a Maypole outside their house.
We passed this garage with a buggy in front of it:
This man and his son were getting on their bikes, and I snapped them as we whizzed by. Look at those blue skies! It was a gorgeous day:
So that was our drive home. Do you feel like you were in the car with us? Really, for the full effect, I should provide some audio of my children whining in the backseat (they’re bored and hungry a LOT) and fighting over things like whether an animal we saw grazing in the grass was a small cow or a big goat.
I feel like you deserve one decent photo after looking at my substandard ones, so take a look at this one that I found on Flickr, taken by Gadjoboy of children walking to school. Amish children are only educated through the 8th grade, after which they go to work, usually for the family business or farm:
If You’re Hooked on Gawking:
May 26th, 2008 at 10:54 pm
I love your photos. Last summer, my husband had to go to Harrisburg, PA, and I went with him. During the day, I drove around in the rental car and I visited the Amish country. I thought it was beautiful.
May 27th, 2008 at 8:40 am
Oh I am SO JEALOUS!!! Funny that today on my blog I mentioned the Amish and how I love them. I do. I do, I do! We took a vacation to Lancaster one summer and I never wanted to leave! My best friend lives in Northern MI and she’s a realtor. Everytime an Amish guy calls her (yes, on the PHONE! ha ha) she calls me to rub it in a little. Last week she actually was IN an Amish customer’s house and used their bathroom. Guess who called me from their driveway to describe the bathroom in detail? Apparently, the Amish enjoy a good magazine while on the pot like the rest of us!
Anyway….glad you had a great weekend!!
May 27th, 2008 at 9:30 am
This is fascinating to me! Being on the West Coast there is not an Amish anywhere in sight. I only get to see this kind of living in pictures, so actually you did good letting us live vicariously through you! And yes, i can almost hear the kids in the background. Are we there yet? I have to go the bathroom! I’m hungry! He’s looking at me! Ah, the peacefulness of the Amish countryside.
May 27th, 2008 at 9:47 am
Wow - wonderful photos!
May 27th, 2008 at 10:01 am
Great photos, glad you had a nice time. We visited once, came home through Intercourse when we took the kids to Hershey Park…I remember all the laundry hanging outside…my Mother did that too when we were young (5 kids) but never the towels, they get so stiff you could rip your face off.
I also remember all the beautiful quilts for sale..
As always a wonderful post and YES you were missed
Kathy
May 27th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Amish kid with no shoes, but a Rubbermaid cooler !
May 27th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
I love the Amish! Their used to be some Amish or Mennonite (I can’t
remember) people living a few towns over, and one of them came
to my friends garage sale one time. (My friend had taught her daughter that being grumpy was ugly, and that people didn’t like
her being grumpy–she was two at the time.) And so this man
comes up dressed in his Amish/Mennonite attire. Apparently
he didn’t look happy, because all of a sudden my friends
daughter starts saying, “Mommy, He is ugly. That man is ugly.”
It was awful, the adults were horrified, and the poor man left.
May 28th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
My sister comes every year to visit her best friend in New York From Australia) and they travel down to Amish country for a short break, she loves it. Thanks for visiting our blog, how did you find it?
May 28th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
oh, we went to this area in 1999. My husband had to go to Grayling, Michigan for work so we all tagged along. On the way home we made a trip to Shipshewana. We ate at the Essenhaus restaurant and shopped.
July 8th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
Recently we went on a trip through Amish country in Northern New York, and were delighted to find several Amish communities. However, we were told that the Amish do not like having their pictures taken as they believe it draws attention to just one person and something in their anabaptist religion stating that it steals their souls. I enjoyed snapping several pictures of their homes, farms and their buggies, I accidentally got a picture or 2 of the Amish people and made sure to erase them. I do love your pictures and can completely relate to feeling like you have gone back in time. It is amazing the things that we take for granted and the things that we think that we can’t live without, and yet the Amish manage just fine.
Once again, thanks for sharing your pictures, they truly are beautiful and by the way, my kids were doing the same as yours… whining!
November 27th, 2008 at 9:50 am
[...] heading North to Amish country, where Dave’s family lives (click here to see the photos I took when we were there this summer). They’re not Amish, but they live [...]