An iffy sort of day so we decided to take a day off and build up our energy for tomorrow's drive to Gettysburg.
Saturday the 2nd
Woke up at 7:00 AM with my faithful alarm clock Punky giving me kisses all over my face. A nice morning, about 65 degrees out, partly cloudy but definitely shorts weather. Today we are off to the Gettysburg KOA, so we had a leisurely breakfast, washed the windows, took out the garbage, walked the dogs and were on the road by 10:00 AM.
Getting out of the DC area was like a regular work day with very heavy traffic on I-495, the main ring road. Eventually we got on MD-270 N and after thirty or so miles the traffic dropped off to nothing as we wound our way through rural Maryland and into Pennsylvania. It feels a little like driving through the Willamette Valley with rolling hills and farmland on both sides of the highway and low mountains to the northwest.
About fifteen miles south of Gettysburg we turned off the freeway and started cutting cross country to our destination. I only made one mistake. I turned on the wrong road. We realized it right away so I turned into a post office parking lot thinking I could just drive around it. Wrong. So we got out and disconnected the car. Tina pulled the car into the loading bay and helped me back up until I could pull out of the Post Office and cross the street into a vacant lot. Tina brought the car up but before we could re-connect an elderly local gentleman came up to us and asked if we needed help. Tina snickered and politely explained where we were going. He gave us directions to the next street we should turn on and wished us a good day. Since we were only about five miles from our campground we decided to just have Tina drive the car and I'd follow. Oh yeah, one interesting thing about the guy who gave us directions... he was wearing very dark glasses and carrying a white cane. 
With Tina running point we made our turn and found ourselves on a very narrow turny, twisty road. Were we really going in the right direction? Apparently we were because we finally came on a KOA sign and pulled into the parking lot. After registering we headed up the hill following a KOA guide and approached our site. Hmmmmm... a little short. Our guide called the office and they gave us the site next to the one we were originally assigned. With Tina giving me directions over the back-up camera system, we got parked in one pass. Since we arrived and got set up by noon we decided to use the afternoon to go into town.
After taking the dogs for a walk and consulting the map we grabbed our cameras and drove towards Gettysburg. Before we got into town we passed a sign for an "Auto Tour" of the Gettysburg National Military Park, which memorializes the struggles and sacrifices made by over 165,000 Union and Confederate soldiers. So we turned around and went back to see what it was about. Just like the name said we were on a one way road that wound through the actual battlefields. The Battle of Gettysburg was a turning point in the Civil War, the Union victory in the summer of 1863 that ended General Robert E. Lee's second and most ambitious invasion of the North. Often referred to as the "High Water Mark of the Confederacy", it was the wars bloodiest battle with 51,000 casualties. It also provided President Abraham Lincoln with the setting for his most famous address.
We stopped and pulled off to read the markers, take photos and absorb the feel of the area. There are over 1,300 monuments and markers placed across the battlefield including the "Eternal Light Peace Memorial" dedicated by President Franklin Roosevelt on the 75th anniversary of the ending of the civil war. The monument has an eternal flame with an inscription reading, "Peace Eternal In A Nation United". The size of the battleground is staggering. When we looked at a map, it actually surrounds better than three fourths of the town of Gettysburg and during the actual battle fighting took place in the town as well.
After touring about a quarter of the battlegrounds we drove into town for lunch. Gettysburg town center is actually a large round-about with historic buildings on all corners. We had a nice lunch at the Pub then walked around town for a while, doing a little shopping, finally getting Tina a malted from a small ice cream shop down one of the side streets. We got back to the car and headed back to camp arriving by 4:00 PM, just in time to take the kids for a walk. To see all of today's photos click on:
Trip distance for today, 85 miles. Total for the trip so far, 6,723 miles.
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