G'burg 2003

By Ed Piper

People often ask if you've visited Gettysburg, when you tell them you're a Civil War enthusiast.

My Gettysburg experience wasn't thrilling.

It is a great site: It has incredible historical significance for our nation. President Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, which he started scribbling on an envelope, I believe, is considered one of the greatest speeches ever delivered.

But when we went, the temperature was an energy-zapping 93 degrees. I used Yahoo Maps, back before Google Maps became dominant, and the crazy software had us taking something like 90 turns--literally--in the days before such devices had been perfected and made more practical. (Maybe I'm mixing up the degrees and the turns, but it was a ridiculous amount.)

In our drive from Buffalo, Dianna's hometown, to Pennsylvania, we were looking for tiny streets in an unfamiliar area. We arrived somewhat frazzled. Not a good start for a battlefield visit.

Throw into that the fact that Dianna had broken her right foot only weeks before the trip, which we were locked into with plane reservations and so forth. She had a Velcro cast on her right leg, and that severely limited her mobility.

(We also moved to a new residence just before our flight East, so we were on some kind of overload.)

This was in 2003. I remember a Cyclorama, or some such name, which was a giant board depicting the entire Gettysburg battle area. Low tech, but explanatory.

I recall the statues and obelisks everywhere, dedicated to different soldiers and regiments for both sides. Probably way more for the North, since Gettysburg isn't revered in Southern circles as a landmark event to be remembered.

We walked a little within the town, near the National Park. There were buses, trams you could take for tours. We took a tour that included Little Round Top. I can't tell you anything I heard, but I remember the view looking down from a raised point. We walked up through a forested area where troops battled on uneven ground. That must have been hell.

We did a little the first afternoon, then stayed a short time the next morning. But with the heat, and Dianna's foot not working, we weren't there for long, and took off.

Gettysburg is a wonderful Civil War site. But it is the most commercialized, the one featured in movies--deservedly--and I am moved to explore other, more off-the-beaten-track battle field locations in my Civil War travels.

Grand Gulf, which I mentioned in a previous entry, fit this ideal: tiny, off the tourist itinerary, no crowds, no commercial promotion of it. We visited it in April 2017.