Gettysburg – June 13,2004

Well today was the ealiest departure of the trip. We loaded the bus at 6:45 and were off on a 2.5 to 3 hour drive. If a person could get a decent nights sleep around this place, it would make the trip a lot better. I was up this morning ay 3:30, and once you wake up on one of those mattresses, you’re done.

Our firts stop, after 30 minutes of trying to decipher directions, was at the farm of Gabor Boritt. His house was near the battle field and was used as a field hospital during the war. He talked to us a little about his life and the speech that Lincoln gave there at Gettsburg to commemorate the National Cemetary.

We then went to the Dobbin House for lunch. This was a great place to stop since it was built in 1776. There were several pictures of John Adams around and I had thought that maybe he had something to do with the place, but the closest that any president had come to the place was Washington, and he had been about 20 miles north of there.

The battlefield was very beautiful. I heard that there were  a lot of monuments there before hand, but I didn’t think that there would be that many. The guide said that there were about 1300 of them around the park. Unfortunately our tour was very fast paced and we did not stop to see many of the things that I would have liked to have seen, and many of the monuments were so tall that I could only see part of them through the bus window. However, I did get a much better picture of the geography of the battlefield. This was a difficult battle to teach because it covers such a large area, and the maps don’t do it justice. Now when I am teaching it I will  be able to create a much better picture of it for my students now that I can picture the place in my mind as we discuss it. The museum also was very nice, maybe by discussing some of this to my students they will talk there parents into taking them there on vacation. If you can spark some interest in them about history, you’ve won half the battle.

The last stop was the National Cemetary. This was not as I pictured it to be. I knew how it was set up from Gaboritt’s book, but I thought that there would be the traditional white headstones that you see on military graves, not the flat concrete ones that were there. Although the area designated for the unknown soldiers did have stone monuments, they were simply small 6 inch square stones with a number on them. A sad end to someone who died for their country. I must mention though that there were many unknown soldiers in the state sections as well.