Day 12---A Trip Through Time

We were time travelers today. First we went to the Landis Valley Museum. This is a very nice living history museum in Lancaster. We got there in time to take a tour and hear more about the place. Two bachelor brothers who grew up in the area decided to spend most of their time and money collecting things that showed the German heritage of the area and eventually turned it into a small museum. They added more to it as time went on and then gave it to the State of Pennsylvania, which continued to  add to it by bringing in more buildings and buying up more land.  Here are some pics:
The gun workshop (there was a special exhibit in the main museum on the Pennsylvania long rifle):

 
This was in the flax/linen/wool room.  They were having a class on a special kind of painting based on stencils, an artform that had almost died out before the Rockefellers liked it and it became the "in" thing. 

The brothers' house, built in 2 stages and quite comfortable.

Across the way was a reproduction of a country store, set up as if it were around 1902-1910.  Kind of neat to look in and around.





One place that was fun after that was a big barn type room that was full of farm equipment that the brothers had collected.  I get the feeling that this was the first kind of stuff they collected.  Here we have a Conestoga wagon (which was invented in the area) and a couple of early motorized tractors:

That took care of the morning.  After lunch, we headed southwest of Lancaster and headed to Columbia.  We were looking for the National Clock and Watch Museum.  We ended up spending two hours here and I found it to be one of the more interesting museums I've ever visited.  Think about it:  how do you measure time?  How has man measured time in the past?  We saw ancient ways to the most modern ways, learned about clocks and clockmaking in the colonies and United States, learned about how watches became synchronized, how clocks became a status symbol and then became something that everyone could own.  We even saw a special clock that took 20 years to make that  the owners would take by carriage up and down the east coast and people would pay money to see what it would do when it would hit the different times.  The curator explained how it worked and then rang the quarter hours and on the hour for us so we got to see the entire show in about 10 minutes.  They had hands on stuff in the museum as well.  It really was a lot of fun.

Marcia wanted me to mention dinner tonight.  She chose a diner up the road as our stop for the meal.  She was thrilled to find that they had beans and hot dogs in a casserole and she could get coleslaw as a side (as well as pickled beets).  This is Marcia's favorite meal in the world and just topped off her day.  Unfortunately, there was so much food she could only eat half and we couldn't bring the other half back with us.