Back twenty years to... Tueday, September 5th, 2006. Day 150. The fabulous 'Tobias Autoparts' store, the 'all new' McDonald's – and 'Come to Christ or Go to Hell'. Gettysburg Addresses, simpler times at the handicrafts show, forgotten wartime heroes and the very first 'Founding Fathers'.

"I awaken feeling completely refreshed, after a 'day off' – relaxing in camp and giving the van a good scrub-up from top-to-bottom. A good feeling to have a super-clean environment in which to operate, and I get busy writing at eight. A good hot shower, a nice close shave – and by eleven, the campsite is virtually deserted. Sonja locates my first planned stop at the town of Waterford, and her insanely circuitous route takes us through a maze of local back-roads, until finally we're popped-out quite neatly onto US Highway 19, and heading south-east.

I’m spotting an inordinate number of Historical Markers at the roadside. The State of Pennsylvania is often referred to as the "Birthplace of the Nation." It is after all, where the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776, and home to the historic and hallowed ground that is the Gettysburg Battle Site, where President Abraham Lincoln gave his now legendary 'address'. And so the State is steeped in more history than you can shake a 'bald eagle' at. In actual fact, it’s just about three hundred-and-fifty years worth. But in the all-round, empiricist North American scheme of things, 'PA' is absolutely freaking – ancient.

Four days on, and outside the hamlet of Schaefferstown, there's a sign for a festival of some kind. Past a line of parked cars, there’s cooking smoke rising, and children jumping-around in hessian sacks. The "Pennsylvania German Fall Harvest Day – 2006." And is this not ideal for me to go see, on a sunny Saturday morning.

Men and women, many in authentic-looking period costume, singing and playing guitars, rehearsing for the afternoon show. Others are offering funnel cakes, pastries, fruit pies and flans, roasting sweet corn, scooping-out ice cream – or whittling-down wood. There are saddlers, weavers and broomstick makers. Ladies sitting at spinning-wheels, and a man who makes half-sized replica firearms. Happy groups of children, concentrating so hard on egg-and-spoon competitions, falling all about in the sack-racing heats, or just running – in blissful and carefree excitement. Plenty of older folk too, sitting around. Talking and laughing – or quite simply luxuriating in the glorious sunshine."

In Search of Small-Town America: Volume 1 is a free-of-charge Pdf digital download – available from our shop. A table of contents, the introduction, the route-map – and featuring content on the first two States travelled: New Mexico and Arizona.

Jeremy Hammond I am a British writer and photographer, and have travelled through India, China, Southeast Asia and Australia, but most extensively in North America. In the late seventies and early eighties, I worked as lighting crew, and later designer, for many top-named British bands, on tours through Europe, Japan, and the USA. I’ve worked as a cruise-ship photographer, in office and store design, database design, visual arts book publishing and as a London-based freelance photographer, specialising in interiors and architecture.