Gettysburg- Monday, April 5, 2021

 

   It has been a LOONG year.  It’s hard to believe, but we have been cooped up for over a year, partly from COVID-19 and partly from Julie’s pregnancy and Abby’s arrival, we haven’t been on a trip of any kind since our trip through Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas back in the summer of 2019.  Like the rest of America, we are ready to get away.  It feels like the claustrophobia inducing quarantines and travel bans are coming to an end.  Julie and Scott got their second Moderna vaccine on March 27, and even though it hasn’t been a full two weeks, we are ready to travel!  We had made this decision over the winter, but we were pleased to hear that the CDC had lifted many of its advised restrictions on travel over just the past few days for people who have both shots.

     So, after our Easter weekend get-togethers with the families, we started packing the car and headed south to our favorite place- Gettysburg.  The original plan was to get up at 4:00 AM and leave as soon after that as possible, but when that time actually arrived, we decided the sleep was worth more to us than a little extra time in Gettysburg, so we ended up actually leaving at a little after 8:00.  In addition to the electronics, the musical instruments and the small library Scott always travels to Gettysburg with, we had to pack stuff for Abby and we had to re-learn how to put two bikes on the bicycle rack for Scott and Emma to use on the battlefield.    

     Instead of arriving before noon like we originally hoped, we were pulling into Gettysburg at a little before 3:00.   That meant that our hotel was ready to be checked into.  It was Abby’s first time in a hotel room and once she warmed up to it, she had fun on the beds and poking in the drawers, though she still hasn’t learned to get her fingers out of the way.  (We’ve also discovered that she likes sneaking over to change the temperature on the heating/air conditioning when no one is looking.)  Since it’s a little slow here, the staff was kind enough to let us park our two bikes in the ballroom.  We are staying at a chain hotel on Baltimore Street, just downhill from East Cemetery Hill and the monuments of Hancock and Howard.  In fact, the town cemetery abuts right to the hotel property and is the main view we have when we look out our room window. 

     After we got things settled in the room, it was well after 3:00 and by our usual after-school reconning, that means it was approaching dinner time, and so we headed to our favorite place in Gettysburg- the Springhouse Tavern in the basement of the Dobbin House.  It was the first time that Abby ever ate in a restaurant, and the first time that Julie and Scott have eaten in a restaurant since late in Julie’s pregnancy, over a year and a half ago.  (Emma has been out to Applebee’s with a few friends of hers, but the rest of us have only gotten restaurant food through take-out for all of this time.)  We wanted our first time out to be a special one, and the Dobbin House in Gettysburg is the place to do that.  In spite of the social distancing being practiced here, we had only a short wait for a table.  There is currently two big white wedding-style tents outside in the front of the building, but that was for the “upstairs” customers. We wanted the downstairs experience.  They have cleared out a lot of the tables and are only using every other booth, but we were able to eat the “Adam’s Delight” downstairs with its plate full of fruits and cheeses and, of course, the sweet bread.  Abby got her first taste of the sweet bread (now listed as “date nut bread” on the menu.  Emma got a charred chicken sandwich.   Scott decided to forgo the “Rum Bellies Vengeance” he would usually have had because he’s still experiencing some side effects from the cancer treatment in February.

     Abby was pretty good at dinner, but when she was ready to leave, Julie took her back to the hotel.  Scott and Emma stuck around and paid, and since the weather was so nice (around 70 degrees with clear skies), they walked back through the Masonic memorial area and the National Cemetery and past Evergreen Cemetery to the hotel.  When we gathered together again, it was time to explore.

      It’s hard to believe that after the countless trips we’ve made to Gettysburg, there are still corners of the battlefield that we have never visited.  Scott had a list of a few he wanted to seek out today.  We started by locating “Jones Avenue”, a small slip of National Park land to the far northeastern corner of the fighting.  Jones was a Confederate artillery officer, and it was from this area that the rebel artillery started shelling the 11^th Corps troops under Barlow.  Scott had heard on the Battle of Gettysburg podcast that this might be the least visited spot of the entire battlefield, and it is hard to find.  It’s right in the backyards of a little residential area.  Scott especially wanted to seek it out when he learned that one of the batteries with a marker there was the “Staunton Artillery,” from Staunton, Virginia, where we used to live.  Another was from nearby Charlottesville.   Soon after we arrived, Julie conceded that we had certainly never been to that part of the battlefield.  Our next stop was just a stone’s throw away- the Josiah Benner farm.  This farm was crossed by attacking Confederate infantry headed towards the hill now known as “Barlow’s Knoll.”  The farmhouse and barn were acquired by the National Park Service relatively recently in the big picture of things (since 2001), and was another place we had never been.

    Behind the Benner farm house was a strip of relatively thick woods along Rock Creek.  This hid our next destination.  We drove back to Barlow’s Knoll, and from there Scott and Emma trapsed off down the hill and into the woods.  When Scott mentioned yesterday that there were parts of the battlefield, he wanted to see that he had never seen before, his Dad jokingly said that if we hadn’t seen them, they must be way off in the middle of the woods.  He was basically right about this one.  As the Confederate infantry left the Benner farm and headed towards the knoll now known as Barlow’s, they encountered a short but stiff resistance from German immigrants in the 54^th New York.  The veterans put a monument in these woods that practically no one now ever visits.  It’s much smaller than their main monument by East Cemetery Hill.  Scott had learned about it before his trips in 2018, but neither time seemed right to venture into the woods to see it.  This time, he and Emma crossed fields that were being cultivated on the east side of the knoll* and pushed their way through sharp thorny prickers in order to find this small marker.  Once they finally did find it, it was somewhat easier to find there way out of the woods.  From this perspective, you could also see what an imposing piece of ground the knoll actually is, and how tempting it was for Barlow to move up to it without orders.  Unfortunately, he was not counting on Confederates coming from the direction that we were exploring today, and the rebels had little problem causing his line to collapse.  (As we left the woods and returned along the side of the field, Emma won bonus points for spotting the right flank marker of the 153^rd Pennsylvania- not as far in the woods as the other one, but still quite literally off the beaten path.)

     When Scott and Emma came out of the woods, they found that Abby had woken up from her nap and Julie was watching her playing among the rocks by the knoll.  As we left, Emma wanted to drive, and Scott sat in the front with her to guide her through the battlefield.  She has been taking courses at driving school (like Spongebob, Emma jokes), and has been getting better with her confidence and her technique.  She drove us around the first day’s battlefield and down Seminary Ridge, past the Confederate monuments.  By the time we got to the Round Tops, Julie announced that Abby needed a diaper change and since we hadn’t brought any with us, we cut through the Visitor’s Center lots back towards our hotel.  Emma got some practice pulling into the spaces in the parking lot. We decided to call it a night, but Scott made one last run to Sheets to pick up some drinks for all of us, including his favorite beverage of all- Diet Coke poured over hotel ice.   

     We managed to get a lot in this afternoon.  It was not a bad start to the week, and we’ve got more planned to come.

* We didn't get a chance to ask a ranger until Thursday, but the guy at the information desk in the Visitor Center said he thought it was probably barley being grown there.  Some of the land is leased out to local farmers, apparently.