Amish furniture

We love Amish furniture.  Part of it is that we love furniture made from solid wood.  Another part is that we appreciated craftsmanship.  The third part is that we like a bargain.

Which is why I drove for 8 hours on Saturday to pick up two oak swivel gliders to replace the very uncomfortable loveseat that came with the RV. We had seen these chairs while browsing furniture shops last week when we were in Gordonville, PA, but didn’t buy them because we weren’t sure that we could get the loveseat through the very narrow (24.5 inches) door. But with the assistance of Jett’s son, we were able to push that particular camel through that particular eye of the needle (it now resides in his screen-in porch) when we got to Lorton.  And at the suggestion of Jett’s brilliant sister Sybil, we realized that it was feasible to make the trek from VA back to PA to fetch the chairs. And cheaper than shipping them.

So on Saturday, after dropping the grandkids off at the gym (they are both on cheer teams), I filled up the diesel tank and headed north.  I made the trip in exactly 3 hours, bought the chairs, had them loaded into the truck by two very helpful Amish gentlemen and headed back “home”. But as I wanted to minimize both the chance of any damage to the chairs and any possibility of anything flying out of the bed of the truck, I set the GPS to “avoid highways.” The result was that the 3 hour trip there became a 5 hour trip back.  But I saw some things that I never would have seen on the main roads:

• The beautiful countryside south of Lancaster, PA.  The GPS took me down some very small back roads to get out of town – past some verdant fields being harvested by horse-drawn reapers – and connected with US 202 for about 20 rolling, twisting miles.  A beautiful route on a beautiful day.
• Conowingo Dam. This surprised me.  I didn’t expect to find a large hydroelectric dam on the Susquehanna River, but there it was.  At just over 100 feet, it is one of the largest private dams in the country.
• Pimlico Racetrack, home of the Preakness Stakes.  There were no horses running, but it was hosting a hotrod show.  In any case I got to see it briefly on my left as I cruised on by.
• The beautiful countryside west of Baltimore.  This was mostly on US 97.  It wasn’t as bucolic as the stretch in Pennsylvania, but it was lovely in its own right.  A very relaxing 20 miles.
• Georgetown.  Despite having worked for the federal government for seven years and having taken many trips to DC, I had never really seen Georgetown.  I probably would have preferred seeing it on foot rather than in a large dually pickup traveling some very narrow lanes in very heavy traffic, with thousands of pedestrians swarming everywhere, but I had enough time at the many lights to admire the area.  Looks like it would be a great place to go to college.

Georgetown accounted for nearly an hour of the travel time and there was nothing relaxing about it.  I really should have bypassed that area.  But I did get to see it and I didn’t run over any clueless freshmen while traversing the neighborhood, so I will count it a success.

When I finally made it to the RV park it was after 5pm.  Jett had been out all afternoon with the grandkids, so I had to unload the chairs myself (after walking the dogs, who were *very* happy to see me).  I had to remove the swivel base from each to fit them through the door, but got them reassembled in the space formerly occupied by the table (which we moved to the space formerly occupied by the loveseat – musical furniture) and was gliding happily when Jett returned.

And here they are, with the small table that we got at the same place:

Amish swivel gliders