A Trip to Amish Country Part 1

Vintage Ohio postcard

The spouse and I headed down to Amish Country last Friday. We got a pretty late start, so we missed our usual lunch at The Barn in Smithville.

Amish Country is kind of a funny thing to me. As a kid, I was never really crazy about going there; in fact it was kind of boring. All it really meant was a good dinner at Der Dutchman in Walnut Creek, topped off with some peanut butter pie.

I know I'm getting older because I kind of like going down to Amish Country now, especially in the fall. It's still all about eating to me, although strangely enough we never eat at Der Dutchman. I guess it's because Der Dutchman was the place my parents always took us to, and I wanted to make some new memories.

1960's Berlin Postcard

But one thing's for sure. Amish County is big business now. Berlin is almost unrecognizable to me – the overdeveloped commercial strip, the sidewalks choked with crowds, and especially the rush hour traffic! (Just try to head west out of Berlin late in the afternoon!)

Nevertheless, our favorite place to go to is Hershberger's Farm & Bakery in Berlin. We usually get some produce (squash and multi-colored cauliflower), some bread, maybe some preserves and some whoopie pies. Then it's a short trip down the road to Guggisberg Cheese – although we didn't stop there this time, because I had bought some of their signature baby swiss cheese at Marc's the week before!

The rest of the day was spent shopping and antiquing in Berlin. Then we usually cap off the day with a visit to Lehman's hardware in Kidron. However, we didn't make it there this time. Why? Because the spouse/navigator decided that she trusted her GPS more than my well-honed travel instincts. To make a long story short, somehow she set the GPS to use major highways to get there – so the GPS mysteriously routed us away from Kidron and towards Massillon instead!

Anyway, tomorrow I'll tell you about our decidedly un-Amish dinner: pizza at Coccia House in Wooster!