Day 4--Gettysburg

What a busy and exciting day! We were up fairly early and headed out to Gettysburg, which is about a half hour from our hotel. It was a very pretty drive through the countryside. Once we got inside the visitor's center we got tickets for the Eisenhower Farm/House and were on the next shuttle out at 10am. It's about a 10 minute ride and then you are met by an intern who tells you a bit about Ike and Mamie and their life in Gettysburg before you get to tour the house.

It's a great view from the front of the house:


Then we took a self-guided tour of the house. It's a nice house, not overly fancy. Loved the sun patio where the Eisenhowers spent most of their time.

The exciting part was that I ran into an old friend--a co-worker from the San Antonio Missions NHP from 20+ years ago. He's pretty much in charge of the Eisenhower site and I just happened to see him this morning. Marcia was wondering why I said "I'll be back in a minute" and then she sees me hugging this tall ranger. I didn't know if he was still at the park as it's been a long time. We did get a couple of minutes to talk and I gave him my email and Marcia's cell. He called his wife, who also is a ranger at the main Gettysburg site, and I got to see her later in the afternoon. It was SO neat to see some wonderful folks from my past. They sometimes work different shifts, but we hope to be able to have a free evening before we leave the area next Wednesday and we can meet somewhere in the middle for dinner some night. My friend, Susan (also a park ranger in San Antonio), and I would sometimes babysit their son Zach when he was a baby. He's almost out of college now, so we have some catching up to do.

That would have made my day by itself, but we still had more to do.

Back to the visitor's center for a movie and the Cyclorama (this huge painting), lunch, and then a trip through their museum, which is very well done. Then we hit the bookstore. I am two books richer and my credit card is somewhat higher, but that's okay. Some of these kinds of books are hard to find. We also bought the CD for the auto driving tour, which we did next. Two hours of driving the park roads and stopping at various places while the narrator explained the 3 day battle. We got the general idea. You see the cannon and the monuments that have been placed by the different states and organizations. This is Little Round Top, which played an important role in the battle. Imagine folks shooting from the top down at the ones trying to get up the hill. An area of high losses to be sure.


You can't drive through the cemetery, and it was now almost 430, so we weren't up to getting out of the truck and walking around. You can see some of it from the road. At this point I was beat, so we headed back towards our hotel and stopped for dinner and to get gas. Crashed now at the hotel watching baseball.

Tomorrow...Hershey, PA.