Confederate Soldier
Diamond Member
I had the luck of hitting memorial day weekend with a three day weekend off from work, and Monday off as a holiday. So I had four days to find something to do with myself. So yesterday after I woke up, I had a bright idea. Why not head down to Gettysburg for the day? I'm close enough that I can finally get to do this! So by 7:00 I was in my car heading down, and when I got there, I was shocked at the amount of people in the town. Then it hit me.
I visited one of Pennsylvania's greatest attractions on a day where everyone has off.
Doh!
So I stopped at Oak Ridge, didn't even bring my camera with me. I just wanted to take the battlefield in. It's my first time visiting the battlefield as a young adult old enough to appreciate it. I hiked to the top of the observation tower and gazed out over the valley below, trying to imagine the scene unfolding on July 1st, 1863. The sea of tourists made it quite difficult. A lot of screaming kids, and banter from teenagers. That's alright, I'll just take a drive down Doubleday Avenue. I found that to be a task, from the amount of people on Bicycles hogging the road, and people stopping in the middle of the road to take pictures, cars behind them be damned. I was annoyed, but just happy to be there.
I tried to get to Culps Hill, but that was jammed, and even the Trostle Farm was being swarmed. People were always in the way of getting any good camera shots. I decided to heck with it, I'll be back again this summer. I went to visit the Pennsylvania Memorial, and find the name of an ancestor that was in the 26th Emergency PA Regiment. I found his name, took a photo, and decided to climb to the top. As I'm going up, I'm surprised at the amount of cursing a woman is doing as she's climbing up, telling her husband that "this is fucking stupid". Annoying, but maybe she doesn't like heights. I can get that.
I get to the top and look out over the battlefield. It's an experience I've wanted to have for a long time. Men from Culpeper Virginia, my birthplace and home, marched across the open field in front of me to be slaughtered at the stone wall. I look down and I see a group of teenagers doing a tik tok dance, in front of the Pennsylvania memorial. A memorial honoring the fallen dead of Pennsylvania, and a girl is twerking in front of it while her friends are doing other vulgar moves. I will not lie, this low key enraged me. To have this amount of disrespect at ANY memorial, let alone at Gettysburg where thousands of men fought and died, and at this VERY SPOT where so many marched straight into death - it infuriated me. I marched down, and walked right amongst the group and stormed off to my car.
Now mind you, it's not as if I'm just a crotchety old guy, I'm their age, I'm 19. But how do I know about what these men have done and respect them, while they do something as nasty as this at a MEMORIAL honoring the dead? I'll never understand.
At this rate I decided that the battlefield is overrun with tourists. I'll come back another day. I'll try out the town.
I drove around Gettysburg three times, and could not find one solitary parking spot. Not one. It was almost comical to me. Could I have picked a worse day to come. I managed to find one spot open at the Horse Soldier (a high end antique shop loaded with military artifacts), and dove in before a New Yorker could. I spent four hours in Heaven, not knowing what to buy. That place was a gold mine, and my mood was vastly improved. I ended up buying my first plate, a Culps Hill find by a man named Ken Bream, and several bullets from locations around the battlefield. After that, I decided to go home.
Did it suck to go down yesterday? Kind of. Am I glad I went down? Actually yes. I was glad just to be there, at a place I have read about for so many years. The place has been on my wish list of places to go since I was 12, when I was finally getting old enough to appreciate it.
By the way, Ken legally recovered this artifacts years before the NPS outlawed relic hunting at Gettysburg, so no, I'm not buying illegal relics.
I visited one of Pennsylvania's greatest attractions on a day where everyone has off.
Doh!
So I stopped at Oak Ridge, didn't even bring my camera with me. I just wanted to take the battlefield in. It's my first time visiting the battlefield as a young adult old enough to appreciate it. I hiked to the top of the observation tower and gazed out over the valley below, trying to imagine the scene unfolding on July 1st, 1863. The sea of tourists made it quite difficult. A lot of screaming kids, and banter from teenagers. That's alright, I'll just take a drive down Doubleday Avenue. I found that to be a task, from the amount of people on Bicycles hogging the road, and people stopping in the middle of the road to take pictures, cars behind them be damned. I was annoyed, but just happy to be there.
I tried to get to Culps Hill, but that was jammed, and even the Trostle Farm was being swarmed. People were always in the way of getting any good camera shots. I decided to heck with it, I'll be back again this summer. I went to visit the Pennsylvania Memorial, and find the name of an ancestor that was in the 26th Emergency PA Regiment. I found his name, took a photo, and decided to climb to the top. As I'm going up, I'm surprised at the amount of cursing a woman is doing as she's climbing up, telling her husband that "this is fucking stupid". Annoying, but maybe she doesn't like heights. I can get that.
I get to the top and look out over the battlefield. It's an experience I've wanted to have for a long time. Men from Culpeper Virginia, my birthplace and home, marched across the open field in front of me to be slaughtered at the stone wall. I look down and I see a group of teenagers doing a tik tok dance, in front of the Pennsylvania memorial. A memorial honoring the fallen dead of Pennsylvania, and a girl is twerking in front of it while her friends are doing other vulgar moves. I will not lie, this low key enraged me. To have this amount of disrespect at ANY memorial, let alone at Gettysburg where thousands of men fought and died, and at this VERY SPOT where so many marched straight into death - it infuriated me. I marched down, and walked right amongst the group and stormed off to my car.
Now mind you, it's not as if I'm just a crotchety old guy, I'm their age, I'm 19. But how do I know about what these men have done and respect them, while they do something as nasty as this at a MEMORIAL honoring the dead? I'll never understand.
At this rate I decided that the battlefield is overrun with tourists. I'll come back another day. I'll try out the town.
I drove around Gettysburg three times, and could not find one solitary parking spot. Not one. It was almost comical to me. Could I have picked a worse day to come. I managed to find one spot open at the Horse Soldier (a high end antique shop loaded with military artifacts), and dove in before a New Yorker could. I spent four hours in Heaven, not knowing what to buy. That place was a gold mine, and my mood was vastly improved. I ended up buying my first plate, a Culps Hill find by a man named Ken Bream, and several bullets from locations around the battlefield. After that, I decided to go home.
Did it suck to go down yesterday? Kind of. Am I glad I went down? Actually yes. I was glad just to be there, at a place I have read about for so many years. The place has been on my wish list of places to go since I was 12, when I was finally getting old enough to appreciate it.
By the way, Ken legally recovered this artifacts years before the NPS outlawed relic hunting at Gettysburg, so no, I'm not buying illegal relics.
