Some people just don't like to leave home, even when they go away on vacation.
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When going to the beach, they find thousands of homes away from home to choose from for a stay.
But when coming to Lancaster County, they find the selection of homes is much more limited.
Recently, however, more people here have begun converting existing houses, often older ones, to vacation homes.
Carolynne and Alfred Wanner are among those people. The Wanner family has farmed the same land north of White Horse for eight generations.
Two years ago when the family bought an adjoining farm, they decided to convert the old stone farmhouse that came with it into a vacation home, which they call Wanner's Pride N Joy Farm Guest House.
Built in the 1760s, the 3,500-square-foot house has such historic features as original hardwood floors and a basement with arched stone walls, walk-in fireplace with bake oven and spring for cooling food.
The home was obviously worth preserving, Carolynne Wanner said, but her sons already had their own nearby homes, so the family decided to fix it up and rent it to visitors.
Renovations to bring the interior up to hospitality-industry standards "cost a lot," Wanner said, but they still went only so far.
"There weren't closets in the house, and we didn't put closets in," she said. They did leave the old clothes hooks up and furnished the bedrooms with armoires and dressers.
Wanner makes a point of preparing a special treat, such as cake or snickerdoodles, to greet her guests when they arrive, and everyone is invited to watch the family's cows being milked as part of the experience of country life.
"Our guests find the quiet most enjoyable," she said.
The Amish connectionIn addition to the rural setting, the other attraction for Wanner's guests, as it is for the county's tourism industry in general, is the Amish culture.
"We have Amish neighbors around us," Wanner said. "We're the only English working farm around us now."
Daryl and Tina Pilon tapped into the Amish connection when they opened the first of their four vacation homes in 2003 in Intercourse, a couple of miles from where they live.
"Our first home [Das Intercourse Village Guest Haus] was in the movie 'Witness,' " Daryl Pilon said.
The next year they added another house, Amish Stay Vacation Home, a 1900 farmhouse surrounded by Amish neighbors in Bird-in-Hand. In 2006 they opened a third home, Amish Paradise Vacation Home, in a wooded area with a creek and big fenced yard in Paradise.
Pilon said he thinks their fourth vacation home, Amish Valley, scheduled to open in a couple of weeks in Intercourse, may become the most popular of the properties.
Built in 1888, but now all new inside, the house is within walking distance of the shops in Intercourse Village, he said.
The attraction of vacation homes, Pilon said, goes well beyond the house to encompass the experience of being in a "cool" little community like Intercourse.
"Some people save up [for vacation] all year long and spend it all in one place, and it's us," Pilon said. "And we take that to heart."
Like many of the owners of local vacation homes, the Pilons both have other jobs outside the tourism industry. But that's not always the case.
Kurt Thomas, who owns the Best Western Intercourse Village Inn and the Carriage House Inn in Strasburg, has also opened five vacation homes in Intercourse in the past few years.
The latest, The Villager Vacation Home, is opening this week just down Queen Road from the hotel.
The hotels, vacation homes and The Inn & Spa at Intercourse Village, a bed and breakfast owned by Thomas' father, Elmer, share a common Web site.
"Basically, what we've been trying to do is to offer all the lodging options," Thomas said.
The vacation homes, he said, cater to the extended-stay market and to families who want to cook their own meals. Reservations and cleaning tasks for the vacation homes are handled by the hotel staff.
Accidental hostsSome owners of vacation homes appear to have stumbled into the business almost by accident.
Sharon Stoltzfus, owner of Gap in the Hills Guest House in Gap, converted her own home into a vacation rental about eight years ago after she married and moved in with her husband, Calvin.
Some past seasons, her vacation home has been booked solid from April through November, Stoltzfus said, but this year people appear to be booking shorter stays because of the economy.
"It's all about the house and making it comfortable for people. I don't make a fortune off it, but I enjoy doing it," she said. "I get to meet wonderful people from all over the world."
Bonnie Martin, owner of Tree Top Vacation Home on the wooded ridge of Ephrata Mountain, opened her vacation home last year after the house failed to sell on the real estate market.
Martin, who owns and operates a home building and design firm, built the house in 2000 with her husband, Paul E. Martin.
They lived there until building another home nearby, which included living quarters for her parents.
When her parents opted to stay in their own home a few more years, she converted the extra space into a bed and breakfast early in 2007, adding the other house as a vacation home last summer.
"I feel very fortunate to live in this part of the world and share it with other people," she said, adding that the vacation home has proved even more popular than the bed and breakfast.
"It's booked almost solid for the summer," she said.
Not all vacation home owners are new to the business.
Dorothy Charles, owner of Country View Tourist Home in Willow Street, said her mother, Barbara Garber, started the business in 1966.
The home sits on land that has been in the family since 1897 and includes the Martin Meylin Gun Shop, which was built in 1719, she said.
Her parents built the house in 1962 when they turned the farm over to her brother, Charles said. Her niece now boards horses there.
They built the house with extra rooms for family members who used to stay with them in the farmhouse, she explained, and then started renting the rooms out to guests.
"Her first guests were the men working at Muddy Run," she said.
The guest house was never a bed and breakfast, Charles said, because her mother never cooked breakfast for guests with the exception of Sunday mornings, if they went with her to Willow Street Mennonite Church.
Charles and her husband, John, built their own house on the farm in 1979 to be close to her mother and father. "I took over [the guest business] in '93 when she went into a wheelchair," she said.
Her father, B. Snavely Garber, died in 1998, and Charles converted the house to a vacation home in 2000 after her mother moved to a nursing home before her own death.
About 90 percent of the guests who stay there now are families visiting parents and grandparents who have moved to Willow Valley Retirement Communities, Charles said.
Her parents continue to have a presence in the house through a book her father wrote about the farm's history, which many guests read, Charles said, and through the religious sayings on the walls.
"My father was a good storyteller," she said. "They were both people persons, and I probably take after them."
Making connectionsSo how do visitors find these vacation homes? Word of mouth and the Internet, say the owners, who almost invariably have their own Web sites and in many cases are also listed on the Pennsylvania Dutch Convention & Visitors Bureau's Web site.
Chris Barrett, the bureau's president and CEO, said traffic on the Web site and inquiries at the bureau's visitors centers indicate a growing interest in vacation homes.
He points out that this area has the second-highest concentration of bed and breakfasts along the Eastern Seaboard. Those accommodations tend to attract more affluent visitors, and he sees the rising interest in vacation homes as an extension of that.
"I think these things are getting a lot more popular," Barrett said. "People want to have the nesting experience."
In many cases, though, especially when extended families or multiple families are vacationing together, renting a vacation home is as economical as renting multiple hotel rooms, these owners say.
Wanner, for instance, charges $150 a night for the first two people and $10 more for each additional person for accommodations that sleep 10 to 12 adults. Weekly summer rates at Thomas' five Amish Country Vacation Homes in Intercourse range from $1,575 to $2,175 during the peak summer season.
That may look quite profitable to someone with an extra home that could be rented to vacationers, but Pilon cautions that it can be more difficult to make it succeed as a business than people might think.
The location or house itself has to have a certain charm, and guests will expect top-of-the-line furnishings such as whirlpool baths and big-screen TVs.
"It's difficult to purchase a home and convert it," he said. "It's not unusual to spend $50,000 to $60,000."
The owner also has to make sure that municipal ordinances allow such use of the property.
Thomas, who's a supervisor for Leacock Township as well as a hotelier, said he's concerned as a public official that Intercourse not become so developed with such businesses that it becomes a nonresidential area.
"There's a balance there, and that is going to be the challenge for us," he said.
Dennis Larison is editor of the business section and can be reached by telephone at 291-8753 or by e-mail at dlarison@lnpnews.com.
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