Four Score and Seven Years Ago

Gettysburg. I've wanted to come here for quite some time now. American history fascinates me, thanks to my dad. He amazes me with his depth of knowledge and his ability to spew out little known, and well known facts. I wish I had half his knowledge of American history. And now that I'm a grown up (well that's still up for debate) I'm thrilled that my own kids seem to have an interest as well, especially punk #3.

For almost 2 months I have been trying to come up with somewhere for us to go...that was the whole reason we are homeschooling this year. But it seemed there was always some reason we couldn't get out of town. Suddenly, I realized that we had this one week without too many responsibilities, and so on Friday I decided we needed to get to Gettysburg. I made a few calls to rearrange appointments and told the kids to start packing. Punk 3 had 2 soccer games this weekend which meant we wouldn't leave until Sunday evening.

We drove to Cleveland on Sunday night and finished the rest on Monday, arriving in Gettysburg at about 2:00p.m. The drive was beautiful, especially once we got off the turnpike and drove Highway 30 into Gettysburg. Here's a pic.



Oh and by the way, we didn't have time to really think about arrangements for our dog Natty, so we just brought her along with us. Here she is enjoying the ride.



Once we unloaded all our stuff in the hotel room we jumped back in the car and went straight to the Visitor Center. It was too late for a tour of the battlefield, but we found out what we needed to do for the next day. President Lincoln gave the kids a warm welcome.





I thought this was worth a picture...the belt buckle that saved a soldier's life.


We left there, went back to the hotel and then walked around town for a couple of hours. Gettysburg is very dog-friendly so it was easy to get around with Natty. We stopped at many Civil War buildings and homes, reading every plaque along the way (well, I read every plaque along the way while the kids tolerated me reading every plaque along the way).

The building in the picture on the right is the Farnsworth House and is riddled with bullet holes. It is believed that a Confederate sniper was shooting from a small window in the attic and that one of his bullets killed Jenny Wade, a young woman who was in her home down the street tending to her sister who had just had a baby. Jenny Wade was the only civilian killed at Gettysburg.


If trees could talk.....


President Lincoln's in town to deliver the Gettysburg address.
The punks are in awe.


Natty's in awe too.


President Lincoln slept here at the home of young lawyer David Wills the night before he gave the Gettysburg Address.



The Dobbin House was built in 1776 and is now a restaurant and tavern that has been decorated to depict the time. The servers wear authentic costume.


We had dinner in the basement tavern. It was lit mainly by candles so getting good pictures wasn't easy. I had the french onion soup....yummo!


I could go on and on, but I won't because I'm about to go nuts with this super slow internet connection. More to come later.

Somewhere a dog barks...probably at some Johnny Reb.