Gettysburg

Chris and I were visiting his family in Fredrick, MD over the 4th of July, and we decided to take a side trip to Gettysburg, PA. I had never been to Gettysburg before and this was a fantastic time to go, since the battle took place from July 1-3 in 1863 and how neat to be in such a historic spot right around the time it happened all those years ago and it was RIGHT THERE, so we went.

We opted to do an audio tour instead of walking around to different battle sites, only because it was in the upper 90s and we thought it would be a shame to see one monument and get heatstroke, thus putting a damper on the whole vacation. We ended up buying a CD from what we thought was the official visitors center, only to find out at the end of the tour that we had entered Gettysburg from a back way and missed the MAIN visitors center which probably had an audio tour CD that didn’t sound like it was from the early 50s. It almost sounded like one of those filmstrips from grade school minus the beep to tell you to change to the next slide. Instead we would hear, “drive left past the stop sign and continue on to the next monument. You should be driving at 15 miles per hour so that what I say matches up with what you see. If you haven’t gotten there yet, turn me off, and turn me on again when you arrive. Then, pull over to the side, and I will tell you more about this monument.”

Weird.

We stopped at many monuments and took many pictures, but we moved quickly so we wouldn’t melt. Then, we came upon Longstreet Tower, named after General James Longstreet. Naturally, we wanted to climb this behemoth, so we tore ourselves from the air conditioned car and began our ascent.

After the first set of stairs, I was already winded. I couldn’t believe it! All the walking I do and one set of stairs almost does me in? Well, I wasn’t going to let that happen. I was determined to get to the top, and get to the top, I did. All 120 steps. Then I sat down for a while to catch my breath. When I finally recovered, I took a couple of pictures.

This is the East View:

Isn’t it pretty?

This is the South View:

Well, the South View sign, anyway, and the parking lot, of course.

Here is a view looking down:

Both interesting and a bit freaky, no?

Finally, the tower itself:

Tall, isn’t it?

What – did you really think I was going to show you monuments and things of that sort? I’m showing you things that people don’t get to see much of. Parking lots, signs, large towers …

Okay, okay. You win. Here’s a monument that I found rather interesting:

No political statements here – I just like the statue.

Isn’t history fun?

This entry was posted on July 11, 2010 at 7:28 pm and is filed under Fun, Holiday, Vacation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.