Today we saw the Amish in NUMBERS.
We decided to head up to Raystown Lake in Pennsylvania for our first taste of the fall season, and they were out and about like an ant colony. Every trail we went on they were running around, each sporting a family bigger than any you’ve ever seen before.
I’ll be honest. Their lives fascinate me, and I can’t stop staring every time I see them in the wild. I almost felt like if I looked long enough, some long lost secret about their lives would be revealed to me. But it never was.
I was only left with more questions.
The real kicker is when you see one with a horse and buggy flying down the road. That click clock click clock click clock of the horse trotting on pavement is straight out an sub-western world.
What are they doing? What does a normal day look like? What are they thinking about? What do they think about us?
There were too many questions, and too little time.
I suppose I should get to the point of this adventure. The name of the game today was Raystown Lake, which was absolutely massive. Thus, this adventure encompasses two parts.
The first part is Trough Creek, which is a leaf covered brooke that feeds directly into the lake. It’s rich with baby waterfalls, the kind that were perfect for leaf covered oasis’.
The second part involved a big overlook of the lake that we planned on hitting for sunset.
But right after we started hiking the first part, we got distracted by the ‘mish again.
One thing you should know about traveling is if you get around enough, you begin to realize that every single state has at least one giant rock that looks like it’s about to fall off a cliff. It’s always called “Balanced Rock,” and it’s almost always swarmed by tourists.
But in this case, it was swarmed by Amish kids- armed with drones, selfie sticks, and DSLR cameras.
Again, too many questions. At least it wasn’t mirrorless? There was no time to wait for a pic so we kept going and eventually landed at our first waterfall. Check this guy out:
Just an absolute beauty of a location. It almost made me understand why the Amish kids had cameras. It was too perfect not to photograph. Risking it all was the only choice.
On our way back I snagged a photo of the trail we hiked down, just because it looked so surreal.
Whatashot:
Last week's chaos at the Dolly Sods had finally gotten its red dead redemption.
But we weren’t done yet. We ain’t even CLOSE. It was time for the big boy view. So we hopped in our horse and buggy and click clocked up to Hawn’s Overlook as fast as we could.
The view of the lake was nothing short of incredible. The only problem was that there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky. And the sun was facing the overlook almost directly.
This meant that everything was blown to smithereens, and just like that my fall overlook dreams were crushed into the ground.
Oh well. The latter half felt like more than enough.
We did, however, get a final Amish treat to make it all worth it.
We listened in on a conversation happening at the viewpoint about 20 feet in front of us, and were able to pick out some juicy details. It appeared as though two non-Amish boys had snuck off with two Amish girls, and were breaking down AI to them in incredible detail.
The crazy part was that the girls didn’t give a single fuck. To them, it was simply a novelty of modern society that they couldn’t care less about. It was almost like another world to them. Meanwhile, our society can’t go a single day without spatting about it. Must be nice.
But, at the end of the day, we’re all here to enjoy autumn. And that’s what’s neat about being human. We can all live in completely different realities, but we all still appreciate the same things about our planet.
Now someone tell me how they’re gonna drive those buggies down the hill. Can the horses brake? What’s their max speed? What happens if they lose control?
