At the end of May, with summer rotations and residency applications looming large in my future, Jane and I took a weekend trip to Pennsylvania. We have been biking on the North Central Railroad trail between Hunt Valley and Monkton (Jane enjoys it so much she is considering investing in her own ride), and one of us (I cannot recall who) decides that it would be swell to rent bikes and explore Amish country. One of us (this is definitely me) also discovers a bike route in Lancaster County that conveniently and considerately passes under the auspices of the Oregon Dairy Supermarket, a beloved local ice cream shop with famously fresh and creamy treats.
On the Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend, we drove an hour north of Baltimore, checked out a pair of hybrids from the bike store in Ephrata, PA, and embarked on a 24-mile ride through the countryside. Truly, no great photography came of this experience, as I was much too busy struggling my way up tiny country hillsides, dodging farm tractors and wayward horse-drawn buggies. Much of the day was spent determining which distant speck on the road represented Jane, admiring the quaint covered bridges that dotted our route, and admonishing myself for a fingerweb-shaped sunburn that was gradually developing on my shoulder - a sort of painful, ultraviolet study in negative space, created by the act of literally slapping sunscreen on oneself without any subsequent attempt at competent application. The ice cream - that heavenly, blessed ice cream in the heart of Amish farmland - was the day's saving grace.
That evening, we stayed in a Lancaster motel and replenished our caloric deficit at an Asian buffet that made me quickly regret most of the positive consequential decisions I had ever made in my life. As the sun was setting (it was past 8 PM), we played our first round of mini-golf in over 7 years of dating (Jane lost substantially). From the lot behind the mini-golf course, I took the photo above - a horse and buggy standing front of barns and grain silos.
The next morning, we made our way back down to Baltimore by way of Harford County, first stopping at the Susquehannock Park Lookout before crossing the Susquehanna River into Maryland. We parked at two trailheads in Rocks State Park, from which we hiked to Kilgore Falls and the King and Queen's Seat, pictured below. By mid-morning, the sun was glaring overhead, and the air was dense and hot. We stopped at a gas station convenience store simply to re-hydrate, and wound up sitting outside on the pavement, basking in the shade of the building while eating hot dogs, sipping sweet tea, and watching light glint off of windshields in the used car dealership across the street. Springtime was over; summer had officially begun.
