Day Ten - Indianapolis to Pennsylvania

So the one place on the Eastern portion of this trip that I was interested in was Pennsylvania Dutch Country since I had a very small glimpse of it on my interview trip in January, but only saw a few farm silos in addition to my interest in the historical and cultural aspects of the area. Day Ten saw us driving almost 600 miles to Pennsylvania, aiming for Lancaster or thereabouts. It was another one of those long driving days, still with very little to see along the way. Lots more fields and flat land for a while. Finally somewhere in Ohio there was a bit more excitement - elevations! Hills! I also saw a high density of anti-women's rights/public health signs which always irks me. Actually that has been going on since about South Dakota (no big surprise there). I'm not sure why such an individualistic culture likes to poke its nose in everyone else's business, but so many people think it's fine to tell others how to live and make decisions. Well, yet another reason I couldn't live in this part of the country. So driving, driving, driving....

We passed through part of West Virginia and started to see real hills or mountains again - all tunnels drilled through mountains to go through. (I believe most of this was in the Allegheny Range.) It was nice to have a pretty landscape again, and lots of trees. Finally, we got into Pennsylvania and decided to set up camp outside of Lancaster, at Elizabethtown. The campground was AAA approved and rated a 2 (out of 3), but it didn't quite match the standards AAA claimed it would. (Yet another letter I will be writing....) The bathrooms were more rustic than the 2 rating stands for and not well maintained at all. It was also really buggy, though that's not something a campground can really control. We set up the tents and went out to get some dinner. We ended up with swordfish steaks, salad and soup and prepared a nice, three course meal! Dad cooked the steaks over the campfire and I made the salad and soup. It ranked pretty high among all our meals on this trip! Since it was so dark and buggy, we tucked into our tents and I slept pretty well, though the humidity was high and just seemed to seep right into everything.