#29 - Visit a Civil War Battlefield

I suppose I should have been more specific, as I could have ended up in Libya or Syria or Sudan or God's knows where, but I did in fact mean to visit a United States Civil War battlefield.  And as a result of my most recent vacation I can check this one off.

Attended my nephew's wedding in Pittsburgh, PA, the last weekend in May.  Pittsburgh did not sound the least bit appealing (my only frame of reference being steel mills and Ben Rothlisberger fans) but it turned out to be quite a nice town and well worth a visit even if you're not attending a wedding.  We were lodged in a neighborhood near the University of Pittsburgh (Go Panthers!)  with an abundance of nice little diners and sandwich shops and bars and what not.  Consider (below) the steak sandwich from Primanti Brothers, their #2 best seller.  Foolishly I asked what their #1 best seller was; "Beer."

We even had time for a Reds-Pirates game at PNC Park on Memorial Day.  A violinist played the National Anthem - awesome!  ("Awesome...like a hot dog?"  "Like a hundred billion hot dogs sir!")  Check out the violideo on Facebook.

Leaving Pittsburgh on Tuesday (my 30th wedding anniversary - my wife's too, coincidentally) we headed east toward the quiet southern Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg.  Stopped, inadvertently, along the way at the Flight 93 Memorial site.  Inadvertently because we did not realize we were anywhere near the site.  Just happened to pull off the turnpike for a Denise break and saw a sign directing us to the memorial.  It is quite beautiful and moving.

The remainder of the drive to Gettysburg was uneventful except for the MASSIVE THUNDERSTORM that forced us off the road and into a convenient hilltop bar.  Waited through several Yuenglings for the storm to subside and finally arrived in Gettysburg in the early evening.

Tuesday night we stayed at the Quality Inn at General Lee's Headquarters on Seminary Ridge.  As the name states, Robert E. Lee made his headquarters in a couple of the buildings incorporated into this hotel site.  There's a small museum on site - free to lodgers - and probably more importantly, the Appalachian Brewing Company brew pub is directly next door, serving a perfectly acceptable IPA.

Our balcony on Seminary Ridge

Wednesday after breakfast and a tour of the hotel museum, we spent the entire remainder of the day touring Gettysburg National Military Park.   The visitor's center is beautiful, the museum very nice and the cyclorama, oh, interesting in a Disney-esque sort of way, that is until you realize that it was painted by one guy in less than a year in 1883 - it's 27 feet high by 359 feet around!

At the visitor's center we purchased "The Gettsyburg Story: Battlefield Auto Tour," a 3-CD set guiding you through some 16 different stops around the 10 square mile battlefield.  It is very good and well narrated - parts could bring you to tears, for example "The Wheat Field" (you can listen to the excerpt at the web site.)   Of course, the narration is much more powerful when you are sitting in the actual field.

We spent about 6 hours driving the 3-hour tour - BTW, I can't use the phrase 3-hour tour without hearing the Gilligan's Island theme song rattling around in the open recesses of my cranium - because I felt compelled to get out of the car and run around at every scheduled stop and points in between.

I could easily have spent a week or a month.  It is beautiful and poignant and inspiring.  I won't even try to recount any details of the visit, there are way too many to begin to describe.  The best advice I can give is to visit. 

A small sampling of photos follows...you can view the lot here.

Little Round Top

Confederate Cannon

Near the Confederate "High Water Mark"

A fine long day, eventually we had to move on towards D.C., but not before dinner at the Pub and Restaurant in downtown Gettysburg.

As a postscript to our visit, after arriving in our Arlington, VA, apartment, the boys and I spent the remaining nights of the trip streaming Ken Burn's "The Civil War" through Netflix.  I've always loved that, but the experience of the battlefield visit puts the film in a whole new perspective.