While many Lancaster County residents enjoyed the horn-blaring, diesel-engine-roaring Make-A-Wish truck convoy that snaked its way north from the city suburbs to Ephrata and back, a few found a more peaceful way to spend Mother's Day in the Sunday quiet of historic downtown Lancaster.

The Lancaster Historic Walking Tour's second annual Tour and Tea attracted 33 walkers, more than twice the number that strode through town last year. The group was broken into three tours, each led by a volunteer in historic Colonial garb.

"Can you think of a better way to celebrate Mother's Day? Because I can't," Joy Linton of East Petersburg said as her group departed from Southern Market.

Linton was walking with her daughter, Kristie Ober, and two granddaughters, Diana, 9, and Rachel, 6, all of East Petersburg.

Maria Holloway of Gatlinburg, Tenn., is visiting the area with her daughter, Dawn Fredericks of Florida, and daughter-in-law, Michelle Leonard of California. She saw an announcement of the special tour in a Lancaster newspaper and thought, "That'd be a great thing to do."

"It's a nice way to spend Mother's Day," Holloway said.

For Kathy Sandberg of Lancaster, the tour was a Mother's Day surprise from her daughter-in-law, Candace Sandberg.

"I didn't know where she was taking me and she showed up, brought me downtown and here we are," she said.

Candace Sandberg, of Centerville, whose mother died just before she was married, is very close to her mother-in-law.

"I try to do something special where we can spend time doing something we both enjoy," she said. "This was a neat way to do that. We didn't realize how much of the history of Lancaster we didn't know."

Led by 20-year veteran guide James Landeck, who when he's not wearing his tricorner hat with the cockade and his white linen knee breeches, is a city building inspector, the tour wound its way through the historic heart of Lancaster.

Landeck led his charges along Vine Street to Duke, stopping at Trinity Lutheran Church which, at one time, was one of the tallest buildings in America, second only to Christ Lutheran Church in Philadelphia.

Walking east on Mifflin Street, the group entered the garden of artist Charles Demuth. The tour continued to East King Street, where Landeck stopped at the Demuth Tobacco Shop, which was founded in 1770, making it the oldest tobacco store in the U.S.

Continuing east on King, the group next walked amid the historic houses of North Lime and East Orange streets, where Landeck discussed Georgian architecture, popular in America before the Revolutionary War, and the Federal style, which sprang up after America shed the British crown.

Landeck discussed some of the historic people buried at St. James Cemetery, and the history of the post-Civil War monument in Penn Square, paid for by the Patriotic Daughters of Lancaster and built shortly after that conflict on the site of the city's first courthouse.

Then it was back to Southern Market for coffee, tea and scones.

"The day was wonderful and the tour was wonderful, but this old lady's getting tired," Holloway said. "It was one of my best Mother's Days."

She and her family are off next to take in Civil War history with visits to Gettysburg and Harper's Ferry, W.Va.

Kristie Ober thought the day was "a really neat way to combine family, exercise and a love for our area."

For her, it was even better than watching the Make-A-Wish convoy.

"We did that a few years ago, and I have to say I think this is a neater way to spend the day," she said. 'There was a lot of interaction."

Linton said the tour reminded her "about what's wonderful in Lancaster."

Linton said she brought her own children on the walking tour when they were young, so it was "really nice to be able to do it with my grandchildren." And what made this special Mother's Day tour even better, she said, was that it included "a tea afterward, where we can sit down and do girlie-girl stuff and have a good time."

Barbara Daggett, a volunteer with the Historic Walking Tours, said the group was very happy with this year's turnout and hopes to repeat it again next Mother's Day.

"We just need to get more help," she said.

E-mail: lalexander@lnpnews.com