Saturday, November 27, 2010- Going Home Early

We started this morning by walking around the area of the first day’s battle, around Reynolds’s Woods and the McPherson Farm where the Iron Brigade fought. It was very bright today, but also the coldest we have seen it. Schniztel loved being out and romping around. We got his picture with Sally, the mascot on the monument of the Eleventh Pennsylvania, since we already got his picture with the wolfhound on the Irish Brigade's monument. We also stopped at the 154th New York's monument.

We went to the Irish Brigade Gift Shop, at the foot of Steinwehr Avenue, which we skipped yesterday. We hoped to get to the American History Store, too, but they hadn’t opened yet. Both of these stores are favorites of ours to browse in, though we didn’t buy anything this time.

We went to the Dobbin House’s parking lot, but we had almost an hour to wait until it opened. Julies suggested we go to Sach’s covered bridge. It’s not far off of Emmitsburg Road and we’ve seen many pictures of it, but it lies in the opposite direction that we always go in, so we had never seen it before in all of the times we had been there before. We needed a map to find it. It’s kind of odd because, as a “bridge to nowhere,” it is really only kept up as a piece of the scenery.

When the Dobbin House finally opened, we were first in line and were able to grab the tables that we wanted but couldn’t get yesterday. The front room was crowded when the doors opened, however, and it was easy to see how it filled so fast yesterday. Scott ordered a pitcher of beer and he and Anna tried to take pictures of his growler. It was hard because the pitcher didn’t actually fill the over-sized bucket, so we weren’t getting the big head on the top of it that we wanted. Even adding another glass to the mix didn’t get the head high enough. We had several people watching us as we were stirring the beer and blowing bubbles in it. We don’t know if we’ll be able to use any of the pictures, but they are either very dark, because of the candlelight, or very bright because of the flash. We learned one thing, however. The waitress asked us if we wanted the slices of sweetbread or a whole loaf. We never got a whole loaf before! It cost us $15, but we still had half a loaf left to take home with us,

We decided this morning that it was probably time to leave Gettysburg. We had originally planned to stay until Sunday, but we had seen pretty much everything that we wanted to. The weather was turning very cold and Emma has been sniffling the whole weekend. Julie had school work that she had to do when we got home, plus, as we later deduced, she is planning to set the tree up on Sunday. So for various reasons, we left Gettysburg and headed north.

We hadn’t finished with all of our shopping, though. Julie had heard of the Thomas Brothers Country Store in Biglerville, north of town, so we stopped there. It is half country store, half museum, and packed to the gills with dusty boxes. We had fun looking through its narrow aisles. The store was visited by Eisenhower, and pictures can be seen of the President and the store’s former owner. We met the owner’s daughter, Marion Thomas Harbaugh, a very aged woman, but evidently one of the most well-known characters and important citizens of the hamlet of Biglerville. She said she had the library built to kill two birds with one stone- a library for the town and a restroom for the store.

We also stopped at the Country Cupboard in Lewisburg, PA. Compared to the Thomas Brothers store, the Country Cupboard was corporate, mall-like and modern. Still it was a great place to get out and stretch for a bit. The rest of the ride was uneventful, though it did start to snow in northern Pennsylvania, and continued for the rest of the drive. We’re home now.