Gettysburg & Amish Country

Loie writing here – with a starting note about leaving Assateague Island – our last night there was VERY windy so Steve and I decided to sleep in the van instead of in our little tent. The wind was blowing so strongly we doubted that it would stay up through the night, or that we would be able to sleep with it flapping around us. Taking it down, in the dark, with the sand blowing stingingly, was a challenge, but probably laughable if you had been watching.


After driving just a couple of hours north to Gettysburg, we first watched a narrated diorama of the three days of the Battle of Gettysburg which took place in July 1863.
Then at the visitor center we hired a guide – a very knowledgeable and interesting older man named John – who drove us in our van around the whole battlefield (18 miles in all) explaining the strategies and movements of the union and confederate armies over the hills and valleys and farmsteads. Since the area is a National Historic Site, it looks much the same as it did 150 years ago – fences, stone walls, even a building with a cannonball embedded in a wall and a barn with a large cannonball-sized hole in it. There is a still-functioning Lutheran seminary whose buildings were used as a hospital during that terribly deadly battle (10,000 men lives lost; 60,000 casualties) Scattered over the several square mile area are 1300 different monuments commemorating various states, armies and leaders. Luke was impressed with how many cannons there were.

This is what they call a "Witness Tree" -- at Gettysburg during the Civil War

The fields over which "Pickett's Charge" occurred


NEXT DAY – AMISH COUNTRY
Camped that night at a beautiful, forested Pennsylvania State Park. Then the rest of the day we drove and wandered about the delightful little Amish town of Bird-in-Hand. A large farmers market featured lots of meats, cheeses, produce, baked goods, quilts and other sewn items, and handicrafts. Steve and I spent some time at the Mennonite Visitor Center where we learned the history of the Amish and Mennonites (both divisions of the Anabaptists originating during the Reformation) – very respectfully presented. We all enjoyed seeing the large prosperous well-kept farms, usually with full clotheslines, and the unique methods of transportation they use – bicycles, scooters, and of course one-horse buggies. I saw a boy mowing a large lawn with a pony-drawn mower. By a shop in town some of us watched a boy of about 10 and a younger boy – around 4 – back up a parked horse and buggy, hook a Radio Flyer-type wagon to the back , then both climbed into the buggy and the older boy went driving off down the busy street alongside cars. Mike, Anne & the kids drove around in the countryside and found a few roadside stands at Amish farms. They really enjoyed getting to visit with one mother and daughter in particular and bought fresh farm eggs, beets, sweet corn, tomatoes, and homemade root beer.




Sharing the road with horse-drawn transportation

Tabacco drying in an Amish barn

These farms are beautiful and the grass is mowed like this

This was my personal favorite :)