Day 15 - An Amish buggy, Lancaster County, PA

Today my Godmother Diane drove us around to show us the local area. The area is very rural and popular with the Amish. The Amish are a very tight knit community of families, originally from Holland, who live a very traditional life style, eschewing modern conveniences like electricity, petrol powered vehicles (no cars) or equipment. They abhor vanity and everyone dresses traditionally and plain. The lifestyle they live is very similar to that of those in the 1820's.

This photo is of an Amish woman in a supermarket car park. Most of the shops in the area provide rails to tie up horses as this is really the only form of transportation for many of the area's residents.

It is now law that buggies must have a reflective triangle on the back and flashing lights for night time. When this law was passed, the Amish tried to fight it. This shows how strong their beliefs are, that they would rather risk being in a serious accident with a car (which happened regularly) than fix flashing lights to their buggies. However, the law was passed and they had to stick to it. The flashing lights are powered by the wheels of the buggies.

For more about the Amish way of life, have a look at our travel blog http://blog.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jennyoneb/2/1377242206/tpod.html