Today started with a drive from the Boston area over to York Pennsylvania.  It was a long eight hour drive on some rough roads but some beautiful landscape.  We arrived at our campground which was by far the worst one we have had.  It was right beside a major highway and a drug rehab centre.  The main reason for staying at York was we wanted to tour the Harley Davidson Factory where Larry’s Softtail was made.  Since we arrived on a Saturday we had to stay here until Tuesday morning because the factory tour was Monday at noon.  So, to make the best of it we went for a bicycle ride in some very nice hills.  It seemed like a short day

today as the clocks rolled back so the sun set by 5 pm.

The tour time arrived and we got to see the bikes being made from the first flat steel piece that is pressed into a fender to the frames being bent, all the robotics and people that assemble the bikes from start to finish.  On average they make 250 bikes a day and these are all already sold!  It

was impressive seeing how everything fits together and that each bike is built individually and uniquely.   We then treated ourselves to a York City Pretzel. A Bavarian style soft pretzel and since we arrived near their closing time they made them 2 fresh ones for us!

This evening we had a very nice dinner at a restaurant with Larry’s cousin Kris Long (Schumm) and her son Jason, his wife Krysten and their very adorable 10 mth old son Emmitt.  It has been a long time since we have seen Kris and it was nice getting to know Jason and Krysten as well.

Next day was a relocation day, this drive was an easier one, only one hour  from York to Gettysburg so we decided to turn it into a food tour.  Even better, a snack food tour and our first stop was at Snyder’s of Hanover a pretzel factory.  We had signed up for a

factory tour where we saw seven of the world’s largest ovens and all they did was make pretzels.  It was interesting to see the process from start to finish in this non-union factory.  The factory is run on power from their own solar farm as well as reclaiming all their waste water. An impressive company.

After the pretzels we needed to see chips.  So, we drove across to the other side of Hanover to the Utz Chip Factory.  This was set up with a self guided viewing area to see the potato chips being made from start to finish.  Impressive as well, seeing the potato as a whole, being washed and skinned, then sliced and fried before being packaged and boxed.  Their potatoes are all grown within Pennsylvania and  grown especially for chips.  It is a rounder, drier variety of potato and they

are even sized according to the packaging that they are going to be packaged in.

We then headed to our campground west of Gettysburg.  Unfortunately, we were only here for two nights and one day and it rained.  It was a fitting type of day as the Americans just elected Donald

Trump as their next president.  So, grey and rainy was fitting.  There was lots of news to read and watch on the TV, so the day went by quickly.  Terrible day for the US.  As we rolled out of Gettysburg to head towards Williamsburg Virginia we

stopped at the Gettysburg Address Monument.  The area where the civil war soldiers were buried and Abraham Lincoln gave his address back in November 1863.  Fourscore and seven years ago…