USA - Canada - Mexico 2016 - Day 21

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Monday, 26 September 2016 - Carlstadt (New York) - Gettysburg

On the road reasonably early this morning on the way to Philadelphia. Crisp clear morning about 14 degrees C. Took the toll road as we wanted to make good time as we had a couple of things to do today.

Philadelphia was on the itinerary to visit to see the Independence National Historical Park which includes the Liberty Bell. The park covers 10 - 12 city blocks and includes a number of historical buildings. The Declaration of Independence was signed here in the Independence Hall. The area also includes, among other buildings, Old City Hall, Congress Hall, Carpenter's Hall, National Liberty Museum, Benjamin Franklin's grave and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier of the American Revolution. Of course the old Liberty Bell has pride of place on show. The story of the crack is interesting as it is not known when it happened but a couple of attempts were made to repair it and these failed and it ended up worse that before so the bell was decommissioned before it broke completely. If I remember correctly, at different times, New York and Philadelphia were the locations of the USA Federal Government prior to the establishment of Washington DC.

After a look around, we headed for our next stop, Lancaster, the center of the Amish community in Pennsylvania. The community numbers about 30,000 and across the States, the total community numbers are rising quite quickly. As we left Philadelphia, the GPS threw another fit declaring that I was in the centre of a park then on the wrong road and a number of other misguiding instructions and position indications until I ignored it and went where I thought would be correct and it eventually caught up and said "Yes, you were right after all". This all occurred in heavy stop start-traffic, which I hate because there is always a reliance on the guy behind to be watching what is going on. I'm always watching my rear view mirrors to make sure they are going to stop. At one quick stop, there was a squeal of tyres, a quick mirror check to see if we were in trouble, a cloud of tyre smoke from the next lane and whompa, nose to tail about three cars back in the other lane.

Closing on Lancaster we were as usual looking for somewhere to have a coffee before an Amish Farm and House tour when we pulled into the outskirts of Gap. A new deviation in the highway was not on the GPS map, not unusual on this trip even though it is the latest map and it is surprising how inaccurate it is, left me hung out to dry and forced me to turn left instead of right. Oncoming traffic was so heavy a Uturn was out of the question so we continued on until the GPS was happy with a new route that looked like we would go around the block and back onto the highway. I tried to convince Therese that it wasn't an error, I was just looking for a smoko stop, she didn't believe me. As it turned out, the detour was about 20 klms and 25 minutes through some really beautiful farming country. We saw numerous Amish farms, their buggies on the road and the working of farms with horse drawn machinery. The visit to the Farm and House was a very educational and enjoyable couple of hours. We had our smoko sitting on the curb again. Wish these people had local parks or rest areas.

Next we headed to York for no particular reason than I had read it had some very interesting and historical buildings. This was just a ride by for a look see. Now I assume that York is named from the old english place of that name and the thing that surprised us was the similarity in building style to the rows of houses you always see in pictures of London streets. One continuous line of houses hard up against the next. You'll recognise what I mean when you see the photo.

Heading toward our overnight stop in Gettysburg, we were running too late to do any sightseeing this evening, thanks to staying too long at the earlier ones, so that will wait until tomorrow morning. Had to stop and put on wet gear but it only misted so wasn't needed. Forecast is for a fine day tomorrow. I'll let you know what we did.

379 klms today, total to date 7,431 klms.