Gettysburg

My favorite day of our trip was Wednesday, the 26th.  That is our actual anniversary.  After a couple of quick mission errands in the morning, Richard and Carol were free to spend the day with us.  One of the errands took us right into Baltimore.   While there we went to Ft. McHenry.  We saw a film that told of the events leading up to the British withdrawal in the war of 1812 and of the morning when Francis Scott Key looked out to see the flag still flying over the fort, inspiring our national anthem.  When the movie was over, a curtain was drawn and out the window was the fort with the flag waving proudly.  Over the speakers was a military chorus singing The Star Spangled Banner.

You can see that the flag flown over the fort today is a replica of the one that flew then, with 15 stars and 15 stripes.

From there we went to Gettysburg.  When I was in Middle School, I really enjoyed learning about the Civil War.  I remember memorizing pages worth of trivia of people, places and events related to the war.  Sadly, I don’t remember much of that information now, but the Civil War has always intrigued me.  Yet somehow, I always pictured Gettysburg as just a big battlefield.  As in one large field.  I was surprised when I realized how wrong I was.  In the three days of fighting there, the action moved over quite a lot of ground.  Richard and Carol have a CD-tour that takes you all over Gettysburg explaining each day of fighting and what happened where.  I think the CD’s take about 90 minutes to listen to as you drive and stop at the various locations.  We ended up taking closer to 4 hours because we stopped and looked around so much.  It was amazing.  It was sobering.  Can you imagine being a mother during that time?  Another thing that surprised me is the number of monuments.  Usually, you have a significant event that takes place and someone builds a monument.  But in Gettysburg there are literally hundreds of monuments.  There were so many significant events, battalions, people, etc. that there are monuments all over Gettysburg to pay tribute to them.  I took a lot of pictures at Gettysburg.  Here are my favorites:

After spending the entire late afternoon/evening in Pennsylvania, we tried to find a place to eat before returning to Maryland.  In the end, we decided to get on the road and we’d surely find a place on the way.  After one place or another was either closed or not exactly what we were looking for, we somehow ended up at Arby’s for a late anniversary dinner.  I’m sure it was the company more than the food, but we all left surprisingly satisfied.  It was a great day.