Quick trip to Bird-in-Hand, PA

This past weekend, I made a trip to Bird-in-Hand to run the Fire Company Challenge.  The challenge consisted of a 5K on Friday night followed by a half marathon on Saturday morning.  I am going to write about the races in detail in my next post.

I met up with my mom who was making the trip with me and we drove a little over 3 hours to arrive at our hotel.  We were staying at AmishView Inn & Suites, which was about 2 miles from the race location.  Our room wasn't ready yet so we went off to do some shopping.  We had passed a collection of shops called Kitchen Kettle Village so we headed back to check them out.

Kitchen Kettle was a collection of different shops.  We looked around in a toy store, souvenir shop, Christmas shop and the bake shop.  I loved that the Christmas shop had a whole room devoted to different nativity sets.  In the "souvenir" shop, there were your basic souvenirs such as magnets and postcards but there were also some handmade local items, such as jewelry and soaps.  My favorite shop was the bake shop.  I expected to find a small shop with some baked items but when I opened the doors it was quite different.  It was a large store with a wide variety of items, such as salsas, soup mixes, cheesecake mixes and jelly.  You could sample just about everything as you walked around.  There was also an open kitchen where Amish women were cooking.  A sign said that they were making strawberry jelly that day and also said "no photos please."  On the other side, there was all homemade baked goods for sale.  I had a peanut butter cookie which was very good.
 

Outside of the Kitchen Kettle shops, there was a place called Immergut Pretzels.  I had read about how great they were so I walked over to check it out.  I ordered a plain pretzel, a cinnamon sugar pretzel, a small soda and a bottle of water and it was a total of $5.  The pretzels were awesome.  Fresh, hot and you could tell they were homemade.

By that time, we had gotten a call that our room was ready so we headed back.  We had a standard room with 2 double beds.  The room was very spacious.  There was a kitchenette area with a small fridge, sink and microwave.  There was a DVD player and movies were available to rent at the front desk.  In the lobby, there is a large area with tables and chairs and a buffet for their complimentary breakfast.  My mom took advantage of that the next day and enjoyed it.

At around 5 pm, we headed to the race location for a pre-race dinner.  The race offered a pasta / pizza dinner buffet for $11 for adults (don't remember the cost for children).  There was salad, spaghetti and meatballs, garlic bread sticks and pizza.  There were Amish women right there making the pizza.  It was all very good.  There was also a dessert table with apple pie, shoo fly pie, and vanilla ice cream.   I had been determined to try shoo fly pie, but the apple looked so good that I went with that.  It was indeed very tasty.

After dinner, I ran (well, really walked) the 5K and then we headed back to the room.  The next morning, I was up at 5 and my mom dropped me off at the race site.  More about the races in the next post.

After the race on Saturday, my mom picked me up and I was very thankful to get a late check out so that I could shower.  Then we headed over to Miller's Smorgasboard for my reward meal!  Miller's has an a la carte menu but we were there for the buffet.  Our hotel was owned by the same people that own Miller's so we had a $5 off coupon from there.  The buffet was huge!  There was a full salad bar, a soup bar with about 8 different kinds of soups, fresh bread and rolls, and then all the hot entrees.  I tried the fried chicken, mashed potatoes, dinner rolls, mac & cheese, pasta salad and french fries.  The dinner rolls were excellent and the chicken was very good as well.  For dessert, there were slices of cakes and brownies but then there was a sign that said you needed to ask for 3 different kinds of pie because they were kept warm.  I asked for chocolate pecan pie, and the woman behind the counter took it out of the warming oven and cut a slice for me.  Then added a scoop of vanilla ice cream.  It was very good!!

After rolling ourselves out of there, we head back briefly to Kitchen Kettle Village to get a few things to bring home.  I brought an individual apple dumpling home for my husband and he said it was excellent.

Then it was time to head home.  I really enjoyed the area and we saw other things we would like to do on a return visit.  I am already planning to do the races again next year so I hope to add on at least one extra day to explore that area more.