Southern Style Goes North

Southern Style Goes North

            Hello, everyone!  Two weeks ago, my parents and I returned from our trip up north, and I’m finally resuming my blogging.  I so appreciate you logging back on again after so long a time.  Our vacation was wonderful, but I missed sharing with you all here.  I apologize for my extended absence; it’s taken me much longer to get back to my blog than I had expected.  But now I’ve finally recuperated from our busy time, settled into my routine again, and have transferred some of my reflections from my mind down onto paper to share with you all. 

            I’m so excited to be back and have this big post ready for you all to read!  I have four posts already planned in which I’ll highlight the lessons I learned from our trip, along with correlating pictures.  I’ll be posting these within the next three weeks.  For that reason, however, I’m going to keep this post brief and concise to the overall agenda of our trip, although of course, I can’t resist tossing in a few insignificant but interesting peculiarities we encountered.  Still, short though it is, I hope it’ll serve as an introduction to my other posts about our trip that will follow.  In addition, for those of you that have been following my The Avid Author blog as well, I’ll be resuming my series of “Writer’s Tips” in my next post.  If you’re new to Heart-chords and are not already familiar with my writing blog, here’s a link for you convenience, and I hope you’ll check it out to see what’s new with my latest literary projects: www.theavidauthor.blogspot.com.

            Even more than my enthusiasm over this introductory post though is my excitement to share with you all a very special surprise I’ve been working on these past two weeks since my return home.  This was primarily the reason why it’s taken me so long to resume my blogging, but I hope you’ll consider it well worth the waiting.  I’ll save that surprise for the end of this post though.  Anticipation always makes an ending much sweeter.

            So for a brief account of our trip.

            Wednesday, September 26^th, my parents and I left Atlanta, Georgia early in the morning.  Our flight was short- only an hour and fifteen minutes- and the weather was agreeable for flying, with little clouds for turbulence.  I’ve flown several times now, so no longer does it bother my stomach.  In addition, one of our flight attendants was an ideal figure for a character of a novel (I find such people everywhere I go), so a portion of the flight I spent imagining a story plot about a flight attendant like her and the handsome young pilot character I would create for her.  I can devise a book plot about virtually anyone, but some people are just book-character figures.  Anyways, it passed the time in an entertaining way at least.

Lake Erie

            Once we arrived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, we rented a car and began our long drive of several hours to Buffalo, New York.  It was raining that day, but the dreary weather had little effect on our plans since it wasn’t a day planned for sight-seeing anyhow.  The drive went by pleasantly, filled with music, audio books, and conversation.  Time is always enjoyable when you spend it with people you love.  We stopped at Lake Erie on our way, and although we didn’t step out because of the rain, we drove along the docks and took pictures from our shelter within the rental car.  As one of the Great Lakes, it didn’t look quite like we had expected.  It just looked like a big lake and not nearly as massive as we had thought it would be, but it was still beautiful.  As we drove around the streets of Buffalo to find our hotel, we admired the houses.  Living in Georgia, we’re used to seeing large plantation-style homes on spacious wooded plots; these houses looked like colonial-style cottages.  They were so different from what I’m accustomed to, but I loved their quaintness.  That night, we ate at The Cheesecake Factory for my very first time.  If you’ve not been to one of those restaurants before, it’s worth a trip.  Very impressive décor. 

Our hotel was incredible!  We were staying at a Residence Inn, but our hotel room was a two-story townhouse with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room, and a full kitchen complete with refrigerator, stove, sink, and dishes and cookware in the cabinets.  Needless to say, I loved my own little apartment I had on the upper story.  In a quaint little nook at my bedside, I even had my own little desk which I made good use of when staying up late to write one night.  It was an author’s paradise!
 

My Creative Workshop

       The following day, we visited Niagara Falls.  I won’t go into much detail here, but I’ll share more on our experience in one of my four upcoming posts, along with more pictures.  I will say that it was breath-taking and beautiful though, but that’s a terrible understatement.



Niagara Falls

           The next day, we toured Fort Niagara in a little town called Youngstown.  Again, more details and more pictures on that to come.  We also saw Lake Ontario that day and ate in a little restaurant called Apple Granny.  It was in the small town of Lewiston near Youngston.  Lewiston was quaint and had your hometown feel to it.  I loved it immediately.  It would be the perfect setting for one of my books someday.  If you’re familiar with The Andy Griffith Show, I’d compare it with the town of Mayberry.  Lewistown even had a one-room barbershop with a bench outside the big front window and just inside, a checkerboard set for a game.  It was just like Floyd’s barbershop in the TV series.

            A few interesting details about our experience in Lewiston.  For the second time on our trip, we saw a black squirrel.  Now if you’re from up north, this probably isn’t a big deal for you, but down here in Georgia, we don’t have black squirrels.  So that was a pretty cool thing to see for us tourists.  It was also in Lewiston that we finally realized why everyone kept looking at us like we were tourists.  I was wearing my blue jeans tucked into my brown and blue cowboy boots.  The turquoise-blue pattern is pretty bright and very conspicuous, and no one that we saw in New York or later in Pennsylvania wore cowboy boots.  I truly stuck out like a sore thumb.  As we walked down the sidewalks lining the main street, people would first look at me as I passed by and then their gaze would fall to my cowboy boots.  One man even gave me a double-take.  It was very embarrassing and made me feel a little self-conscious, but nonetheless, it gave us quite a laugh.  It was no wonder they knew we were tourists with such an obvious give-away like that.  We also saw parked along the street a three-wheel motorcycle that was very oddly painted.  I thought it looked like it had a face.  It was very unlike anything we had ever seen. 

 

That evening, we lingered inside a Starbucks coffee shop with our drinks as we waited for night to fall, and once darkness came, we returned to Niagara Falls for our last sight of the cascades.  The display of colored lights on the water was beautiful.

            When we awoke, it was Saturday, and that day, we drove south all day from Buffalo, New York down to Exton, Pennsylvania.  Exton is near Harrisburg and near to my aunt and uncle’s house.  Again, the drive went by quickly for us.  We spent Sunday with our extended family, attending church with them in the morning and then visiting with them at their house afterwards.  My two younger cousins and I put on a concert for our parents.  My youngest cousin and I sang while my other cousin played the guitar.  What fun memories to create!  On our way to their house after the church service, we passed a telephone booth; an icon of the past, right?  Strangely though, it was a Verizon Wireless telephone booth.  Another peculiarity of our trip.

            Monday morning, we drove to Lancaster County.  Here was the big experience I had been anticipating for weeks!  We drove to Gordonville, Pennsylvania, a little city just outside of the town of Intercourse.  We met up with my aunt and uncle and cousins again and spent several hours browsing through the little shops in Intercourse with them.  That afternoon, we checked into the guest house we were renting on an Amish working dairy farm called Beacon Hollow.  That experience was about to become one of my favorite parts of our trip.

The Sight & Sound Theatre

            We stayed in Gordonville that night, as well as Tuesday night.  On Tuesday, we attended a play dramatizing the Bible story of Jonah at the Sight and Sound Millennium Theatre.  This was our second play we had seen here at the theatre, and like the Joseph play we had seen prior, Jonah was also excellent.  Very professional, incredibly done, and immensely enjoyable.  If you’ve never attended a Sight and Sound production, it’s very well worth the trip.  For more information about the company, check out their website at www.sight-sound.com.  Afterwards, we closed the night by stopping at our newly discovered restaurant for dessert.  While in Buffalo, we had dined at a place called Friendly’s for dinner one evening.  We had never heard of the restaurant before, but it became a favorite of ours.  They have delicious ice-cream sundaes!  If you’re from Georgia, you know that we unfortunately don’t have Friendly’s restaurants franchised here though.  Needless to say, enjoy the place if you have one in your area, and next time you’re there, eat a sundae for me.

 

            The following day, Wednesday, my family left the Amish farm and drove to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.  It was about an hour’s drive.  We toured the Gettysburg Civil War battlefield that same day.  For someone who loves history as much as I do, this was an opportunity of a lifetime.  It was fascinating to see the information I had learned for years in my school history books come to life before my eyes, to see the sights of all of the famous charges and encounters I had only ever read about.  We purchased an audio cd to guide us along a driving tour and spent the day driving from stop to stop.  I admit it didn’t look like much.  It just looked like a bunch of open fields with a ton of statues all over the place.  But for the creative imagination, it was much more.  I’ve written several battles and war scenes for my stories before, including an American Civil War battle, so it was no difficulty for me to imagine a chaotic scene of gunfire, cannon shots, screams, yells, and… yes, bloodshed.  It was sobering to be sure.  I couldn’t help placing myself in the position of a soldier in that decisive moment in America’s history, and likewise, imagining what it would be like to be back at home and receiving a letter bearing the fatal news of your loved one’s death.  The battlefield looked like all of the other fields we had passed by on our long drives, but somehow these fields were different.  These fields had been drenched with scarlet puddles of blood.  Blood that ran in little rivulets across its grassy ground.  This was soil that been soaked and steeped with the crimson blood of these men who made such an incredible sacrifice.  That blood-soaked soil hadn’t been removed from that battlefield; it was the same soil I walked upon.  It was… haunting almost in a way, but the emotion I experienced was more that of reverence.  Of reverence and gratitude for the men and their families who had sacrificed so much- even their own lives- for freedom.  For me and my freedom.  It kept me pensive and solemn, and our stroll afterwards through the Soldiers’ National Cemetery did nothing to break the spell.  To walk by and see the white tombstones of soldiers from all different wars, the Civil War memorial markers bearing only a number and not even a name… it was heart-gripping.

 

 

 

Devil's Den

           

 

Soldiers' National Cemetery:
the sight of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address

 

 

 

 

 

 

Civil War Memorial Markers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

       

        We drove a few hours back to Pittsburgh the next morning and caught a late afternoon flight to Atlanta.  Again, we were blessed by an easy plane flight and landed before nightfall.  We had arrived home, and I had already begun to prepare for sharing my experiences with you all.  It was a memorable trip, and one that I’ll never forget.  My sincere gratitude to my parents for the magnificent photographs they took, for I was too awe-struck at it all to capture any pictures.

 

Autumn Colors in New York

And now for the ultimate surprise you’ve been waiting for.  I realize many of you are probably intrigued and eager to know more particulars about our stay on the Amish dairy farm since it’s such an unusual experience and, as I mentioned, one of my favorites.  Unfortunately, I can’t describe it well enough for you to fully appreciate the farm.  It’s one of those things you just have to experience for yourself… so I’m going to let you.  That’s why I’ve written an entire narrative sharing with you in thorough detail our two-days staying on the Amish farm so you can experience the place and the family for yourself.  You’ll be reliving my time there, complete with my true thoughts and emotions.  It’s a unique opportunity to learn about an Amish farm and an Amish family from a first-hand experience, a chance to read the longest piece of my writing that I’ve shared with you all yet, and it’s a great chance for an exclusive glimpse of my personality that few people ever take the time to get to know.  You can find my story on The Avid Author (www.theavidauthor.blogspot.com) under the post titled The Riehl Deal.  I think it’s safe for me to say that you won’t want to miss reading this.

            If you have any questions about my trip or about my narrative describing the farm, feel free to ask away!  Just leave your question as a comment either here or on The Avid Author, and I promise you a reply as well as an answer to the best of my ability.

 

~We’ve all heard of the phrase “pulling on her/ his heartstrings,” but heart-chords?  I was struggling to decide what to name my blog.  I wanted it to be a name that was both creative and meaningful.  As I pondered, my gaze fell upon my acoustic guitar where it stands in my bedroom, and the Lord reminded me that our hearts- our lives- are instruments.  They are constantly in song, but what melody our heart plays is each of our own decisions.  They can play a melody for praise or for entertainment.  A musician selects his songs according to his audience.  So do we.  Whether our audience is the world or the Lord, our song will be different.  This blog is designed to first, increase my awareness in finding God and His guidance in my every day and second, to share the music lessons He teaches me in tuning my heart to learn the chords of praise He longs to play on my heart-instrument.  Music is a powerful tool.  Use it for His glory.  “He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God.  Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord.” Psalm 40:3