pennsylvania

Pennsylvania happened in two parts.

The first - Gettysburg. We went to Gettysburg after leaving Kentucky but before Washington D.C. We decided to stay at a KOA right in Gettysburg, and the campground to me had a bit of a 1960’s family summer vacation vibe to it that I really liked. They had movie nights and lawn games and a swimming pool, and the place was pretty filled up. Since the anniversary of the battle of Gettysburg happened a few days prior (along with July 4th), it was still bustling.

After settling into our campground, we headed to the visitor center the next day for a day filled with all things Gettysburg. First we headed to the National Cemetary for a brief and somewhat gruesome tour. Here we learned about the disgusting truth of what happened to those who died in the battle, of which I will not go into detail here. We saw the scores of unnamed soldiers/unmarked graves and discovered the approximate site of Lincoln’s famous speech, the Gettysburg Address. The Gettysburg visitor center was very impressive, and I think probably the most state of the art of all of the National Park centers we encountered. The first thing we did was watch an excellent short film done by the History Channel, narrated by Morgan Freeman. From there we viewed the Gettysburg Cyclorama, a 360 degree painting from the late 19th century of the battle scene, enhanced with three-dimensional scenery, lights and narration.  http://www.nps.gov/gett/historyculture/gettysburg-cyclorama.htm

From there we went to the museum portion of the building, which houses an amazing collection of uniforms, artillery, artifacts and tools from the battle. Seeing the Civil War presented in this real life manner definitely made it feel relevant and interesting to me. We had planned on taking a two hour walk through one of the battlefields, but when we realized we had only seen a ¼ of the museum by the time we needed to leave, we decided to stay and finish looking.

The next day we decided to take a self-guided driving tour through the battlefields, which given the heat we were experiencing, was probably good. It was amazing to see the amount of monuments throughout our tour. At first they seemed quite impressive and majestic. Then we took note of how many there were. Then we got kind of cynical about them and almost found them humorous because it was kind of overkill.

Maybe we had just too much war, and needed something a little lighter, but Guy then took us to the Utz Chip Factory, for a self-guided tour ending with a free sample of their potato chips. After tasting how delicious they are, we of course had to head to their store to get a handful of their 30 cent sample bags. Honey BBQ is definitely my favorite.

Part two of Pennsylvania…Philadelphia. This was our final stop after Washington D.C. before coming back home to Minnesota. Highlights of Philly include: a visit to the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall (where both the Constitution and Declaration of Independence were signed), Rittenhouse Square Park, walking down South Street, cheesesteaks, pineapple gelati at Rita‘s, and driving through one of my best friends old Philly neighborhood.