The Redneck Pilgrimage

My brother and I went up to Cabela's in Hamburg, PA on the day after Christmas. I'd never been and we both had the day off. In retrospect, we should have picked a different day we both had off as the store was mobbed. It is an impressive establishment. As seen from afar:

That Cabela's sign on the back of the store is the size of a large house. If you want a better perspective on how big the store is try the view you get when you walk in the door:


If you look down the middle of that picture, you see what I affectionately refer to as Mount Taxidermy. From this distance it looks like rectangular lumps of gray rock with ice and fluffy things on it. It's actually about three stories tall and is covered with life-sized animals like mountain goats, moose, and bears. It's bigger than my townhouse and you wouldn't know it from the front door.

By the way, the whole left side of the building? Gun counters. I've never seen that many guns in my life. You could put the inventory from every gun store in Delaware together and you'd still have counter space left over. And unlike the wussy sporting goods stores in this state, they sell handguns as well as hunting rifles and shotguns. (UPDATE: A coworker asked me if the guns section was like the Gun-Lots-of-Guns scene in the Matrix. Yes, that image captures the volume of firearms quite nicely. Cabelas had a lot more wood-stocked hunting rifles than Neo though.)

I hope they build one in Delaware eventually. I'm sure they could put one downstate somewhere. Every hunter, shooter, camper, and fisherman from the entire Delmarva peninsula would shop there.