Gettysburg, PA

If you want to swim for a few hours in a deep pool of American history, just visit the Gettysburg National Military Park. I can’t say that I have been to all of the great battlefields of the world, but this one is huge (24 square miles), relatively new (the battle was 149 years ago) and incredibly well-preserved, so it is hard to imagine that there are many better. There is a wonderful visitor’s center, with a museum, a theater and a bookstore that looks like it stocks every Civil War book currently in print. And there is a self-guided 24-mile auto tour which is arranged chronologically. If you get the companion 2-disk CD and book (as we did – $25), you can spend an entire afternoon visiting the sites where so many died during those three bloody days of 1863. Plus the site of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.  You can take the dogs, too (as we did – free).  If you have a nice day (as we did – free), it is a great way to spend an afternoon. An incredible place. Highly recommended.

We didn’t do too much else while we were here.  We did go into town on Saturday, had a nice breakfast at the Lincoln Diner, right in downtown Gettysburg on one of the streets down which the Union army fled when routed on the first day of the battle. We were also lucky enough to be in Gettysburg for the once-a-year antiques festival which had 150 vendors lining the streets hawking all kinds of stuff that I had when I was a kid (Flexible Flyer, View Master, Hardy Boys, etc). Of course we couldn’t really buy anything as we have no room. That made it a very inexpensive day – $1 for a tiny doll and $8 for ice cream.

We stayed 3 nights at the Gettysburg Campground, conveniently located just 2 miles from the start of the self-guided auto tour. It is a large campground – 240 sites – and it has just about everything you could want: pool, horseshoe pits, playground, dog walk (with free poop bags), a very nice general store, mini-golf and, most importantly, spacious sites with cable TV.  There is also an on-site RV repair business, which so far hasn’t helped resolve our slide problem.  But I ran into the repair guy this morning at the general store and he promised to stop by to take a look at it.  I doubt if he will be able to improve on my temporary fix (cut a washer to serve as a collar for the damage cable end), but at least he can give me some idea of what will be involved to fix it right.  I will probably have to add that to the growing list of things to be repaired when we finally get to a dealer – probably in Knoxville, TN.

Next up: Lorton and Alexandria, VA and a week with Jett’s sons and grandkids.  And a pair of new tires and an oil change for the truck.