Gettysburg Visit

This past week my wife Lori and I took a vacation to Gettysburg Battlefield National Park. Gettysburg is one of my favorite places to visit and this was our second vacation here in our RV motor home. Some of the highlights this year were visiting the new visitor's center with it's vastly improved museum and new orientation movie and the improvements they've made to return the battlefield terrain to its historical state by clearing trees, adding fences and rebuilding historic structures. My only disappointment was that the electronic battlefield map presentation, which was my favorite exhibit in the old visitor's center, wasn't brought over to the new visitor's center and is now gone forever. The new visitor's center has integrated the Cyclorama painting presentation, and I have to say the restoration that was done on the painting was masterfully done. Sorry no photos are allowed there.

Our favorite part of the trip by far were the park ranger presentations. Of these the best by far was a two and a half hour walking tour entitled "Opening Moves" which focused on the first half of the first day's battle. This is my favorite part of the battle, and walking that area of the battlefield while the ranger described the action, punctuated with quotes from soldiers who were there at the time was exceptionally interesting. We also attended hour-long presentations on Sickles advance at the beginning of day two, and the action at and around the Devil's den also on day two. It's incredible that more people don't attend these excellent presentations. Our Devil's den tour had only five people including us in it which gave us great access to the ranger for questions.

Below are some photos, one taken from Little Round Top which shows some of the work that's been done to restore the battlefield, the other is a photo my wife took of the Wheatfield that I just like a lot. Since this was a second visit for us as a couple (my 8th visit) we didn't take a lot of photos, but there are some more photos here. I have more wargaming-related posts to make soon, including some new AWI figures, and ancients figures I've painted as well as photos of my newly-renovated hobby room.