Day 8: Gettysburg

On Sunday we left Delaware and headed back towards home through Pennsylvania. We had one more stop on the trip and that was Gettysburg. We planned to go to the battlefield and visitor center with the motorhome and then stay overnight at the Gettysburg Campground nearby.

It was only a 3.5 hour drive to Gettysburg. The route took us across Chesapeake Bay (via the other major bridge) and around Annapolis and Baltimore. In hindsight I should have taken a route to go through downtown so we could at least see it. None of us have been to Baltimore and it would have been nice to drive by Camden Yards. But everyone was calm and we were cruising pretty good so I just stayed on Google’s suggested route.

Gettysburg really is in the middle of nowhere. And that’s not to discredit it, but it’s not a convenient place to get to. You’re on some country roads for quite a while before you just kinda get there. And it’s in southern Pennsylvania, so as previously noted, it is super hilly and mountainous in places.

We made it to the visitor center which had RV parking. We opened up the motorhome ate some snacks and then walked up to the visitor center and museum. Before I describe anything in Gettysburg I should note that Allyson and I both did a poor job of planning this visit. Part of it was naivety on our part. We did not fully understand the size of the place. I think we started piecing it together the night before when we saw there were several options to tour the battlefield by car or bus. We ended up with a list of spots we wanted to see and we were going to have to wing it to find them all on foot since we couldn’t drive the motorhome around areas of the park.

We walked up to the visitor center and museum. It’s run by the National Park Service so as expected it was great. Going through the museum would be a bit expensive for all of us and not all the kids would take a lot away from it so we passed on that. Pretty much the rest of the park, and a bunch of exhibits in the visitor center were free. We checked those out and then headed out to the memorial for Lincoln’s Address.

The walk to the memorial was a little over a mile, mostly on paved trails. It was hilly in places, and it was hot so it wasn’t the best walk. What made it very difficult was that Nolan cried for nearly all of the walk. He cried on foot and cried in the stroller. He was just tired and hot and there was no pleasing him. So the walk to the memorial was tough.

You eventually get to the Gettysburg National Cemetery which is where Lincoln’s Memorial and several monuments are. It Is a very special place. There are memorials all throughout the cemetery. Some for things like Lincoln’s Address, or graves for specific people, but many are memorials that the states erected to honor their citizens who fought and died in the war. I thought that was really interesting and we made a point to check out Ohio’s memorials. Ohio had the third most troops of any state in the Civil War behind Pennsylvania and New York (who had the most).

We also walked around and checked out some of the other areas of the cemetery. Gettysburg was an active military cemetery until the 70’s, so there are graves for people who served in military across a large span of time. I actually hate Military Cemeteries. When you walk around them there are a high number of people who died in a conflict, and thus they died in their late teens or twenties. It’s awful. It’s just a reminder of how incredibly stupid war is and how it’s such a shame it’s a part of our lives.

If you can set those thoughts aside you can really enjoy Gettysburg. While it’s a shame the war had to happen, it is great to see the recognition for all of the people who were so opposed to slavery that they were willing to go to war over it. Slavery is such an enormous, ugly, black eye for the United States. It is good to see some reminders that people stood up against it.

After walking through the cemetery we headed out towards downtown and went over to the Appalachian Brewing Company. Allyson’s dad had suggested this to us. I was slightly weary of sitting down for another meal with the kids, especially after being worn out in the heat. But the brewery worked out great. We all got some root beers and craft sodas, cooled off, and enjoyed some good food. It’s funny that Allyson and I are so averse to eating in sit-down restaurants with all the kids because we’re worried it will be difficult. Ironically, because we so rarely do it, the kids think it’s such a treat and are generally awesome. I think we’ve only done it three times with all seven of us and each time it has gone very well.

I left the restaurant early and jogged back to the motorhome. Now I really didn’t feel like running back to the motorhome. But I really didn’t feel like listening to the gripes on the long walk back. Plus it was hot and I knew the motorhome would be hot. So I ran back, fired up the A/C’s and then drove over and picked up Allyson and the kids.

We made one last stop at Devil’s Den which was something Allyson wanted to check out. Devil’s Den is really just a rock formation, but because of how the rocks are shaped and where they sit they are perfect was ambushing oncoming enemies. Both the Union and the Confederacy had control of it at different points of the battle, so losses were very heavy here on both sides. It’s supposed to be a haunted place. We pulled over and Allyson and Caroline went to check it out. I was moderately interested, but since I had to park the motorhome on the side of the road I opted to stay there with the other kids who weren’t going. While walking up the path to Devil’s Den Caroline told us she felt a chill. Was it ghosts? Was it a coincidence? Will we ever know?

We finished up with a drive through some more of Gettysburg on our way to our campground. Our campground (Gettysburg Campground) was pretty nice. It was clean, it had some good amenities like a pool and putt-putt. The kids wanted to get in the pool but after days of the beach and pool we told them we were going to cool it. We actually decided to run our dirty laundry through the wash before heading back home. It seems backwards to do laundry on vacation, but we have such a large quantity of it all the time that being able to do it all in a couple cycles is a huge time saver. We did the laundry and played putt-putt and ping pong.

It was around this time Allyson and I started having our typical conversation about whether we stay the night or just drive back. It happens almost every trip. Once you have completed all the stops and attractions you have planned you enter this mode where all that is left is the drive home, so why not just knock it out now. We had a little over 5 hours of driving left. We decided that around 8pm we would leave, and then we would stop somewhere on the road to transition the kids to bed.

We started the drive and immediately ended up on very windy roads in the Appalachian Mountains. It was dark, the roads were endlessly windy, and I couldn’t drive the posted speed in the motorhome. I constantly had people stacked up behind me looking to pass, and I wasn’t matching the pace google expected. Our 5-hour drive was quickly extending. We eventually made it to the interstate which helped. The roads were still windy but multiple lanes helped traffic flow better. Once we hit Ohio it was back to the flat roads we’re all spoiled with. We finally pulled in the driveway at about 3am.

It was a long drive, but we were glad to be home. I had some things to attend to for work early Monday morning and it was definitely easier to do that at home than on the road.

All in all, vacation was very good. We took in a lot of history, saw some new beaches, and got to spend a lot of time together as a family. It was difficult at times due to the heat and Nolan’s fussiness, but I think we all enjoyed it. So that means it’s time to start planning the next trip. We’ll use the motorhome for some local stuff the rest of the summer. So the next major trip will probably be around Thanksgiving and then next summer we are hoping to make another big trip out west. So there’s a lot to look forward to.