Montgomery County Day Trip

To celebrate my friend, Terry's birthday we planned a day trip to explore the Amish area of Montgomery County. We met up at ValueMotors so I could drop my car off to have some work done and we headed out in Terry's car.

      I had hoped to stop in SPROUT BROOK to stop in an old store I noticed last fall, but my GPS did not recognize the name of Sprout Brook, so we headed towards Canajoharie.  We pretty much drove through Canajoharie because we needed a restroom and we could see a McDonalds across the river in Palatine Bridge.  It turned out to be the same McDonalds near the geocache Peggy, Christa and I found last fall.  This time, I saw the tiny cemetery that the cache is named for.   I don't know how we missed it before, since it is sitting right in front of McDonalds.  We headed back to Canajoharie where  we found two geocaches and had lunch at a small diner.   LISA'S FAMILY RESTAURANT.  We both had the burger special for $6.00, and it was pretty good but not exceptional.  The waitress was VERY friendly.  

     Then we headed up to Palatine Bridge again.  I could not find the pie shop that someone at a shop I visited last fall told me about, but while looking, we found the MOHAWK INDIAN CRAFT SHOP. We stopped and went in and bought postcards.  

     We then decided it was time to find the AMISH area.  It seemed pretty elusive at first even though we had the names of the roads to look for and we could see the roads on the map I had.  Two women we ran into at this old church suggested we backtrack a bit to a certain route so we tried that.  We never did find the route, but the area we found ourselves in did seem to have a lot of Amish farms, spread out.  We stopped at this farm stand and purchased some fresh produce.  
     We saw a sign saying "jams and jellies" and we headed down a dirt road and we came to an Amish farm.  I asked a young boy about the jams and jellies aince I did not see a shop and he went in and got a woman, who I think may have been his grandmother.  She said she would bring some out for us.  There were several young Amish children hanging around and I tried to start a conversation with them, but they did not answer any of my questions.  Terry and I purchased some jelly and conversed with the older woman a bit and when I asked here where we were, she said we were in the Fort Plain area.  We found a couple of more Amish farms, and stopped at  a very small farm that offered vegetables, but nobody was home.

   I had the addresses of several Amish schools in the Fort Plain area and we were able to find this one:  It is probably not a ONE ROOM schoolhouse, from the appearance.
     Then I asked Terry if she wanted to go to an Amish run grocery store in Fort Plain and she did, so we headed to Fort Plain.  The store moved from the previous address, so we had a hard time finding it.  We tok a break to have some cold drinks out of my cooler.  Then Terry said "any more geocaches to look for?"  I looked at my info and realized that we had missed the most interesting geocache the one hidden near the Palatine Church, so we headed in that direction.
     When we got to the church, we noticed the front door was wide open so we went in and looked around.

This postcard shows how the church appears from the outside.  It is absolutely beautiful inside.  Unfortunately, we used up most of our available time and didn't have time to look for the cache, but we did see the bridge where it is hidden.  I also took a minute to check out the cute, small Visitors Center across from the church.  I was hoping to get a new Montgomery County map since mine was getting pretty wrinkled, but they did not have any. I did pick up some brochures,  The Visitors Center is a tiny museum, and had some artifacts on display.
   By this time it was getting late, so we headed for home.  The GPS kept sending me down a closed road in Fort  Plain, but we finally found our way on a route to Cooperstown.  It was a great day!