dry county
Who taught: Phil and Kelly
Mountain pie
This afternoon, Jessy and I got back from camping with my friends, Phil and Kelly. We went to one of the Pennsylvania state parks. We were going to be there Friday night but, due to the heavy thunderstorm, we instead left Saturday morning. It was really fun! We definitely would like to try longer one next time. One of the surprising stories of our camping happened Saturday night. We left some of our food on the tables and some animals came and had their own feast while we were sleeping. They ate all of our breads, beef jerky, chocolate and marshmellow. We think it was raccoons. But who knows? It could be bears. This would never happen in Korea. So, one lesson for you if you are going to camp in America. “Never leave your food outside! Safest place would be in your car!” Anyways, it was a lot of fun. Especially, Jessy and I finally get to eat mountain pies and s’mores. Furthermore, Kelly told us a few scary stories, sitting around camp fire. I sill think about them, especially black little dog story, and feel scary.
Another thing which I found very interesting is no alcoholic beverages are allowed in all of the state parks in Pennsylvania. I was curious and of course asked Phil and Kelly. “So, I do not understand why they do not allow alcoholic beverages here. Is Pennsylvania most conservative state in America?” And They said, “No.. not really! You can find so many dry counties in many states.” “Wait! What is dry county?” I asked. Phil said, “It is a county where you cannot buy or sell any alcoholic beverages at all.” I was not able to believe it. “What? Really?” (For your information, all of the states in America have counties and counties comprise cities, townships and municipalities.) In fact, I looked into this a little bit more. There are three different types.
1. dry county (dry city, dry town, etc.) : bans both the sale and possession of alcohol.
2. wet county : permits both the sale and possession of alcohol.
3. damp county : permits possession of alcohol but bans the sale of it.
And, believe it or not, there are so many dry counties in America. You can find the list of them here. So, apparently, Pennsylvania is not the most conservative state in terms of alcoholic beverage consumption or sales. Honestly, I cannot imagine that people cannot even see any of the alcoholic beverages in their neighborhood. What do you think? Do you want to live there? Another question is what if you break that law? Is there any severe consequence for that?
I had really great time even without any alcohol but only with good friends.
Pennsylvania (and many other states) has lots of old alcohol laws. Alcohol has a strong presence in US history especially in this area.
Also, leaving food out can be very dangerous because it can attack bears. Even putting out birdseed can attract them.
Having a chance to look at wild bears would be exciting as long as I feel safe 🙂
I assume you mean “attract bears”, not “attack bears”! The former would make sense, the latter would be quite amusing to see.
Haha, That is what I thought too.
Let’s attack bears!
Another variation of the mountain pie is called the “ghetto pizza”. Same ingredients pretty much (white bread, ketchup, and american cheese), but cooked in the microwave. And not really associated with camping.
I doubt ghetto pizza would be as delicious as mountain pie but I would try it later.
Oh my… Attack from bears. did you see that? I can’t believe this.
All that i know about a bear is “Wnnie the pooh” and the expression of “Does the bear shit in the wood?”. A bear is unfamiliar but cute. 🙂
Anyway, why don’t they prohibit people from bears? if there’s a possibility to be attacked by bears, they should act something. (Looking at the bright side, it can be surely proved that a nature is being conserved very stricktly, so that you can enjoy the nature, but…. I don’t get it)
Well, a bear in Korea was an extinct species for the last 50 years.
Since our goverment feels the necessity of restoration of damaged nature these days, the setting-free project of wild animals in the forest started 10 years ago. It’s cruising along with no problem. I hope i can see a bear in the woods soon. 🙂
As far as i know, there are only 13 bears in Korea.
Maybe.. 🙂
I have not seen them yet but there is always news about wild bears showing up in towns. The thing is all of the parks are really wild and there is no fence blocking wild animals from the area where people camping. And Pete told me that most of the animals know where people are camping so that they tend to come to the area during night time to enjoy food. Another surprising thing in America is that animals are not afraid of people at all. I hope we can revive bears in Korea successfully.
one little bear has been caught in a trap and people tried to spare its life, but it’s died in the end.
12 bears 🙁
Sorry to hear that! When did it happen? Recently?
I went to college on a dry campus. Noone was supposed to have or drink alcohol, even the teachers who lived off-campus.
As you can imagine, the rules were not strictly obeyed, but lots of people didn’t drink. I think it made the parties very different than they would be on a college campus where drinking was completely allowed.
Wow! That is quite surprising that even the teachers who lived off-campus were not supposed to drink. Do you happen to know whether it is changed now?
As Brian said, the US has a long history dealing with alcohol. One thing you might not be aware of that it was (mostly) illegal to drink alcohol for about 13 years! This was due to a Constitutional amendment that established Prohibition.
I saw a picture of prohibition agents. Was there any organization called, Internal Prohibition Agency? What a job!