Harrisburg, Strasberg, and Amish Country

10/1 Today we drove into Harrisburg (the capital of PA, in case you don’t remember your geography!!) and toured the capitol with a class of 3rd graders:

This is looking up at the ceiling in the center of the capitol building:

And this is looking down from the 4th floor - the group on the steps is another 3rd grade class:

This is the Supreme Court and its ceiling:

From the capitol we found the Civil War Museum.Here are a couple of pictures:

On  Friday, 10/2, we drove to Strasberg, PA to a train museum and saw a large number of old trains, train cars, etc. Each car or train had the actual history about it which made it very interesting.

This was one of the first refrigerator cars, and, to keep the freight cold, they had to use ice.  It's somewhat hard to see, but the person on the ladder was adding the ice:

This one was my favorite:

They also had train rides but we missed the last one.

As we were leaving the museum, we saw this driving down the street:

We are in Amish country here and this was the first horse and carriage that we saw.

On Tuesday, the 6th, we drove over to this area again to learn more about the Amish.  The took a 2 hour bus tour and traveled the back roads to see their farms and businesses.  We visited a local grocery store and bought some fresh bakery goods.  I don't thing we have ever seen so many foods with "gluten free" labels.  We also toured a local shop that was making various types of adirondake chairs and gliders, etc. from recycled plastic.

Towns in the area had some interesting names, such as:

Bird-in-Hand

Bareville

Intercourse

Blue Ball

Paradise

And the tour guide said that he lived in "Satisfaction"  but I couldn't find that one on the map!!

It was a very educational day to say the least!!