Gettysburg

I decided that on my travels North I would go to Gettysburg, (I don’t add the Virginia because the name stands on it’s own). It has some kind of hold on me, ever since I went there on family vacation as a kid about 7 years old I guess. You see, my father was very interested in the civil war, he read about Gettysburg, watched movies and shows about Gettysburg, had a collection of civil war Swords and Bayonets, and he wanted to go. So we did, we stopped at almost every statue ( and if you have ever been there, that’s a lot of statues), read every plaque and imagined what it must have been like there for those three days of fighting in 1863. I think I have visited at least 2 more times since I was 7, so I thought it was time to go back, alone.

Gettysburg was in my line of sight for this trip, so after getting off the the interstate I jumped on US Route 15 towards my destination. This road goes right through Gettysburg and next to the battlefields as you get closer to town. The speed limit drops to 35 and then 25 MPH in respect of where you are and what happened here.

For three days July 1-3 over 50,000 Americans killed by other Americans. Crazy. This place is somewhere everyone should see, it hangs on you like a heavy coat, it should. At the same time it has a charm to the town. I thought of the people who just happened to live here when this came about. The Civil war was a different type of fighting, old style. Line up in rows, march towards the guy’s in different colored uniforms, who also are marching in lines and shoot at each other. Just keep moving towards each other until you run out of guys to shoot, war is crazy. Families, friends, strangers, white people ,black people, Americans, killing each other and it still happens today, for the same reasons. I looked at the forests around the town, thinking what it must have been like trudging through the thick woods, loaded down with what you had saved, tired, hungry and thinking about the war you are marching towards. The homes on the out skirts of town, some still standing today, and what the people who lived there were thinking and hearing for three days, gun shots, cannons sounding like thunder, the cry’s for help. Gettysburg is heavy, but it was us.

I don’t really understand my connection to this place is now. I knew about it, I didn’t study it hard, I guess it took growing up, my previous visits and returning again to learn more.

I stayed the night near downtown, the downtown helps soothe the soul a little after visiting huge fields where thousands died, with small stores , a hotel, candy store, restaurants, and a small town feel that masks what happened just down the road. The history here is everywhere, the museum and visitors center is new with a movie and a lot to see. Also there is a small store front that sells Civil war memorabilia downtown I went in it is full of the real deals from all over not just Gettysburg. Worth dropping in.

Well, it was time to keep moving and I headed out US 30 and great back road towards Boston.