Our Red Dress World Tour – Chapter Thirteen

We never know what’s coming week to week here. Why? Because Karen does not have a set schedule and it varies from week to week. Some weeks it’s a full 40 hours/5 days, other weeks there’s only 3 or 4 days to work scheduled. It makes it difficult to plan too far in advance. But! lucky for us we can be spontaneous and we always seem to have a couple alternate trips in our back pocket.

CAUTION! THIS BLOG CONTAINS PHOTO OVERLOAD!

Such is the case for this chapter of Our Red Dress World Tour – closer to home! We started out early hitting the road towards Baltimore, which will be our base for two nights at the Four Seasons. Pool time and visiting the Pennsylvania Dutch country area nearby are on the list. We are looking forward to the farm stands for home grown goodness and bakery yumminess! Not to mention the Amish cheese and ring bologna!

We were treated to a wonderful suite at the Baltimore Four Seasons, with a lighthouse view. The amenity was a BMORE cutting board with chocolate shavings, an anchor sugar cookie, a cute crab macaroon, two other macaroons and a chocolate truffle with the Four Seasons logo in gold dust as well as a bottle of Saratoga water and a bottle of red wine. So nice to be spoiled! I always look forward to the amenities as they are usually unique to the the area (hence the anchor and crab).

I’m not quite sure when it was discovered that I somehow didn’t pack my many medicines – UGH! We enjoyed the sunshine for a while and our lunch pool-side. An unplanned side trip back to D.C. to find where I had left my personal pharmacy filled our first afternoon instead of relaxing by the pool. Which by the way got progressively noisier as the time went on so it was less relaxing than planned. On our way back to B’More we stopped and picked up some salads for our dinner. Too late to do much else, we played some UNO before bed.

Thursday was all about our plans to revisit the Pennsylvania Dutch country areas. We headed to Litiz for our time entry into Sturgis Pretzel Factory – a place we visited many years ago when Karen was young. We learned, once again, about the origin of the pretzel, how to make the shape of the pretzel and how much we would have been paid to make the pretzel. It was a fun and interesting time. Afterwards, we headed into Amish country in search of farm stands, quilts, horse and buggies, and lunch. The back country roads were lined with very tall corn on both sides. We also passed a tobacco drying barn. We ate lunch while in the Bird-in-Hand area then headed up the road to Intercourse for some unique rolled ice cream. The day was fastly disappearing on us so we headed out in search of a few covered bridges. The bridges we visited were Bitzers Mill Bridge in Ephrata, Kurtz’s Mill Covered Bridge near Lancaster, Hunsiders Mill and Web’s ill Covered Bridge in LItiz. The craftsmanship boggles the mind!

We ended our day with a stop at a Mennonite Farm Market, where we finally found Amish Cheese and a few other goodies. All too soon the shops were closing so it was time to head back to Baltimore. A huge shout-out to my city kid, Karen, for navigating the hills, road twists and turns and Amish buggies while driving the back roads on our return to Baltimore. We didn’t find as many farm stands as I remembered from years ago, but we did happen upon one and brought home-grown tomatoes, cucumbers, corn on the cob, a honeydew melon and an oatmeal whoopee pie. Quite the haul! The corn on the cob was grilled to perfection along with Zweigle’s red hots by Karen and complimented with Bush’s Original Baked Beans. A delicious tomato was enjoyed on a BLT for lunch. And the cucumber and tomato will be enjoyed in a chef’s salad tomorrow. The melon is chilling and will be a good TV snack later. And the whoopie pie? Well that was a load of sweetness! The sticky bun was delicious and breakfast shared with Karen the next morning.

Our late lunch did not leave us room for dinner, so we snacked on our room amenity and some cheese and crackers while we played UNO. Yes, we take our UNO cards with us every time! We enjoy the game and wish we had started keeping score when we started playing during the Pandemic.

Our plan for our last day was to sit by the pool and enjoy another pool-side lunch. But the weather was not cooperating so we headed home early instead. Our time in the PA Dutch country had come to an end.

A little blast from the past! I found our pictures from 1984 road trip to the Pennsylvania Dutch area. It just adds to the memories…