It's Emma's spring break at UB, and she wanted to go somewhere. She kicked around a couple of ideas of places to go on her own, but ultimately decided that she wanted to go to Gettysburg if we could go too. She didn't have to twist Dad's arm very much. So after school yesterday, Julie picked up everyone else and off we went. We arrived in Gettysburg slightly before 10:00, and checked into the hotel that Scott had picked- the relatively new Best Western that he has been wanting to try on Steinwehr Avenue. The room is on the big side and while it looks pretty standard, the artwork is all Gettysburg related. The fun part was at breakfast in the morning. The breakfast room is in the corner of the 3rd floor, the highest floor, and overlooks the battlefield. We could see the sun coming up over Cemetery Ridge and look down the Emmitsburg Road past the end of the Steinwehr business towards the center of the Union line. It was a great place spot to start the day.
After breakfast, we climbed in the car and drove out the Emmitsburg Road to enter the battlefield from the south, by the Round Tops. Julie dropped Scott and Emma off at Little Round Top and went back to the hotel with Abby. Scott and Emma explored the summit of Little Round Top. It had a lot of work done to it, and when we were here back in 2023 it was actually closed. This was the first look we've had of it since then. There are parts of it that feel a little different- more open maybe? There are new historical signs and a new pathway. Scott and Emma walked from there back to the hotel, about 2 miles away. Emma was considering listening to a Civil War podcast as they walked, but Scott was regaling her with stories the whole way-- some about the battle, some about things that he had seen and done here. At one point, she asked whose house was there, and he confidently said, "The Weikert house!" and then quietly admitted that he really didn't know. When he turned out to be right, he had to get a picture there. (He tried the same thing at the 26th North Carolina monument near the Angle, but wasn't as successful.) It was overcast and in the 50s, but it wasn't bad weather for walking.
Meanwhile, Abby and Mom were swimming in the hotel pool. The pool is in the front corner of the hotel, with windows facing the street, but in the same direction as the view we had at breakfast. Julie said the water was very nice, like bathwater warm. By the time Emma and Scott joined up with them, they were dried off and ready to look for Starbucks. We went out York Road to the shopping areas there and got Starbucks refreshers for Julie and Emma and a cake pop for Abby. Scott stopped at the beer store and got some German weiss beer for tonight. We then went to the stores in the Lincoln Square area in the middle of town. Julie always likes looking at Codori's, which has gifts from Germany and Russia. Abby got a nesting doll there. Scott went to Dirty Billy's Hats and the comic book store nearby. We all went to a store called "Oh Man!" which specializes in "manly" gifts. We found a t-shirt that would have been great for Grandpa Frank, but they didn't have it in his size. Next door was the Gettysburg Chocolate Market.
It was getting close to time for lunch, and we first stopped at the Dobbin House, but they said it was going to be a 45 minute wait. We didn't think Abby would last that long, so we went to Tommy's Pizza, which is another one of our favorites anyway. After lunch, the sun was coming out, but the cool weather and the swimming had made all of us a little sleepy, so we settled in to the hotel room for a short nap. Scott grabbed a beer glass and a bottle opener at a gift shop on the way back to the hotel.
It was about two hours later when people woke up and we hit the road again. Emma wanted to explore some of the more interesting stores that she saw as when we were in the Lincoln Square area earlier, so we dropped her off there and let her explore. The rest of us went to the Outlet Shoppes. Someone has been growing to fast and is outgrowing many of her clothes, so Julie wanted to go to the Oshkosh store to see what she could get. With no sales tax in Pennsylvania, Julie picked up a basket full of new clothes for her. Abby liked picking out t-shirts with Mario Brothers and Minecraft on them, as well as a bunch of other spring and summer clothes for the coming months. We strolled down the shoppes and got several things, including some Goldfish snacks from the Pepperidge Farms store for tomorrow's car ride. Scott wanted to get some new Gettysburg shirts, since so many that he has are wearing out, but the store we often go to seems to have closed. He did find a Funko Pop of Powergirl, which seems kind of random, but he had been looking for it in other places for a while.
Meanwhile, Emma had been working her way through many of the quirky and interesting shops on Baltimore Street. She ended up buying a vintage Gettysburg postcard along with a set of old postage stamps she thought were both interesting and inexpensive. She passed Schriver House which is now a museum and saw the bullet holes left from the battle in the Farnsworth House. We had said that we were going to rendezvous with her at the Dobbin House at 4:30, hoping to put our names in the line so that we could eat there around 5:00. We were on our way there when she contacted us and said that the wait was already an hour and fifteen minutes.
It really seems to us that every weekend is busy in Gettysburg now. That's good for the town, of course, because it's built on tourist dollars, but it's not good news for us. It seems like we used to be able to come in the off-season and have the town mostly to ourselves. Now it always seems like there's crowds of people. The wait times at the Dobbin House show that. It's a Saturday in March, for goodness sake. There have been a few re-enactors in period dress around-- mostly women and civilians, it seems-- and Emma said she saw a posting about "Re-enactors appreciation weekend." Julie thought that maybe there was some event at the college. Whatever was causing it, we decided that the Dobbin House wasn't going to happen this trip.
When we were driving around earlier, we passed a place on York Road called La Bella Italia. It's decorated in an Italian style, and Julie had commented that she has always wanted to eat there but we never have. Since the Dobbin House was crossed off the list, we decided to give La Bella Italia a try. It's a pretty big place, and we were escorted through several quaintly decorated rooms before we got to our table in a quiet corner. Julie and Emma enjoyed a bruschetta appetizer and Julie had the highest praise for the thin bread that was used in it. Abby got a plate of spaghetti and told the waiter it was "yummy." Even though we had Tommy's Pizza for lunch, Scott and Julie ended up sharing a Buffalo chicken pizza. It was good, but not great. Emma ended up paying for our meal and so we thank her for the nice dinner.
Julie wanted to continue driving on the battlefield and we wove our way back and forth. We went out to the Lutheran Seminary and drove around the first day's battlefield. We stopped at the statue of Sallie the dog on the back of the 11th Pennsylvania monument, though only Emma and Dad got out of the car because the wind was blowing pretty hard at that point. Julie wanted to drive down Seminary Ridge by the Confederate monuments. We went from there by the Round Tops and saw the swampy pools of water that have collected in the Plum Run/Bloody Run area. Scott thinks its just springtime flooding, but Julie wondered if something had gone wrong with the drainage in the area. We went through Devil's Den and the Wheatfield and then circled around again because Scott wanted to go by the 64th New York Monument and wanted a stop at the Irish Brigade monument. We went through town after that because it seemed like we should stop at the 154th New York's monument. The sun was going down and was lighting the clouds in interesting ways, so Scott got some cool pictures there. We then went through some of the back roads in town to go back south of town again because Julie suggested driving past Spangler's Spring and Culp's Hill.
After that, we made our way towards the hotel. Abby had been asking every two minutes or so when we were going to go back to the hotel, so she was glad to get out of the car and back to the room. Scott had come wanting to get some new shirts, so he and Emma walked up Steinwehr Avenue to the t-shirt store that was still open. He bought one and then returned to get another. Emma had been considering going on a ghost tour. Julie wasn't able to go with her because of her knee, and she had probably missed the start of the tours by that time. We saw some in progress tonight. She decided not to do it this trip. She checked her phone and it told her that she had walked something like 15,000 steps or roughly 7 miles today, between her battlefield walk with Dad this morning and her shopping this afternoon. That's less than what she did a month ago at Epcot, but still quite a day.
