We wasted an hour and a half after checking out sorting out the rental car. They only allow contracts to a max of 30 days so we had to go in and renew the contract. When we collected it in Dallas they said we can't take it into Canada so I've been stressing ever since that I had it wrong that back in Oz I'd been told we could. It would seem its a southern thing, here they looked at me like I was an idiot when I asked if we could cos the answer was of course you can, whew big relief.

When we shopped the other day for groceries and wine we thought things were more expensive than they had been further south. The new car agreement had far higher taxes on it so we asked and apparently the taxes on everything get higher the further north you go, that must include food and alcohol :-(

We headed north through Maryland passing trees which are slowly getting their autumn colours, past fields of corn and white fenced horse properties. We are starting to see more wildlife by the roads, much of it dead but not all.

It's definitely getting cooler, low to mid 20's with grey skies threatening rain.

We passed some suburbs and roads with interesting names like Virginville, Cockeyville, Quaker Bottom Rd & Cold Bottom Rd, all appealing to our juvenile sense of humour in much the same way we cackled a few days ago at a shopping centre sign listing the businesses there. Second last was Dick's, directly below was another business, BJ's lol

We crossed into Pennsylvania and headed towards Pennsylvania Dutch/Amish country. Initially it was all very industrial, big business is well entrenched, pharmaceutical and plastics companies to name but a couple. Finally we started to see Amish people, kids hopping off the school bus or heading home with a parent in a horse drawn buggy. Just about every house had the washing out, long high lines filled with their odd clothing. Monday must be wash day for everyone :-). We went through one of the many covered one way bridges and made our way to the town of Lunch for intercourse, oooops sorry, wrong way around lol we made our way to the town of Intercourse for lunch lol. Intercourse is smack bang in the middle of other small towns like Blue Ball and Paradise, goes to show what no TV does to your ability to suitably name your towns lol

We found a store selling t shirts and tried to get a replacement for my old one Graham and Val bought me years ago, also intended buying one for Graham. Unfortunately they didn't have the same one and those they had didn't go into the larger sizes, I got one that will just cut it for me that says I heart Intercourse, not nearly as funny as the earlier one.

We stopped at an Amish store and bought super fresh corn on the cob and asparagus, that's dinner sorted :-)

Amish life seems to be a mix of the old and modern they all dress the dress, many ride push bikes or use the horse and buggy but they also drive cars, use tractors and operate other farm machinery. We saw one farmer harvesting his corn with a machine that picks it and pops it out of a chute and usually goes into a waiting truck, on this occasion it popped it into a waiting horse drawn cart.

Across the border and into New Jersey, about 10miles in the flags on the bridges started appearing again. It must have something to do with proximity to where it all happened.

We are booked in NYC for 3 nights from tomorrow, we got here about 7.30pm so decided to stay this side of the river tonight and hit NYC tomorrow am