Day 10--Wolves and a Cloister

Today had a unique combination of events. This morning we visited a wolf sanctuary that is just north of Lancaster. We did get a little lost, but the lady at the gas station knew where it was so we made it in time for the 10am tour. There were enough people that they divided us into three groups and we were in the last group.

The sanctuary has been there for a while and has several packs of wolves and several new arrivals that are still in quarantine that we didn't get to see. Most were rescued from people who thought the pups were cute but had no idea how to raise wolves. We learned all about alphas, feeding, pack life, pups and all kinds of things, including how they do things at the sanctuary. I'll just post some of my favorite pics from the 2 hour tour.











The sanctuary let Marcia in free because she is a veteran, but we ended up spending $85 at the gift shop, so they made it back up. We thoroughly enjoyed visiting the sanctuary and learning about the wolves.

After a quick lunch, we headed to Ephrata to visit the Ephrata Cloister, a religious community that was established in the 1740's. I have an interest in religious utopian communities and this was a very interesting one. Founded by a German fellow and his followers, he had a community of celibate brothers and sisters, as well as married couples who supported the community but who didn't have to live under the rules. It was a very regimented life, involving a lot of praying and worship, a lot of work, and very little sleep and food, and not much in the way of comfort.

This pic shows a "cell" or a room a sister might live in. The bed is a wooden plank that is 18 inches wide, and the pillow is a block of wood. They slept from 9pm to midnight, then got up for a 2 hour church service, then went back to bed from 2am to 5am.


This is the meeting house where the sisters would hold their services.


We got to take a tour of the insides of the women's dormitory and meeting hall and the founders house and had a great guide who was very informative and quite funny. The rest of the tour was self-guided. Nine of the original buildings remain and the rest are recreations, but the location is original, though it would have been farmland at the time. The setting now is absolutely gorgeous and very relaxing. The cloister is owned by the State of Pennsylvania. These other pics are just of some of the other buildings on the grounds.








We then donated heavily at the Museum Shop (books for me) and headed back to Lancaster. We stopped at the Outback for an early dinner because once we got to the hotel I knew there was no way we were going out again. It was a wonderful day, but it was our longest day of touring so far.