Day 1 started at the crack of dawn; we
left the Worcester area at sunrise to make it to Gettysburg by 1pm,
after hitting some traffic around Wilkes-Barre. We went straight to
the beautiful new Visitor Center, which was packed – gorgeous
Saturday afternoon, no surprise!
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| New visitor center at Gettysburg National Military Park |
Honestly? It left me a bit cold. We saw
the Gettysburg video, which had extraordinary production values, and
the new installation f the Cyclorama, which gave me vertigo but was
extraordinary in its detail. Its interpretation didn't add much to
the battle itself, however; a lot of flash without much substance.
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| The re-installed Cyclorama |
We bypassed the new exhibits – which
I'd like to see someday – in favor of an auto tour of the
battlefield, which took us several hours as we worked from both the
audio CD we'd purchased and my notes and the 12th
Pennsylvania regimental history by Martin Hardin to place Richard
Gustin during the battle. We ended up having to loop back around
again and climb up Big Round Top – the 12th Pennsylvania
monument is at the very top of Big Round Top, where the regiment
moved after holding the line on Little Round Top during the day of
July 2.
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| Monument to the 12th Pennsylvania Reserves, at the summit of Big Round Top. I believe this is the highest monument in the entire park. |
The battlefield itself is enormous and
extraordinary and I think, on this brief visit, a bit difficult to
parse meaning out of. I grasped the basics of the battle fairly
quickly, but perhaps because of the sheer scale of everything, and
the level of detail in all the interpretation, it was tricky to get a
good takeaway feel.
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| The view from Devil's Den up Little Round Top |
After the battlefield tour, we ventured
into downtown Gettysburg to get Matt his kepi (which he will be
wearing for the rest of the trip...), and then to the campground,
where they were celebrating Christmas in July and fed us free burgers
and hot dogs. Outstanding.
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