Events of Monday, November 8, 2010

          You’ve gotta love Daylight Savings Time, at least in the mornings. This morning we awoke in Round Top Campground to light streaming in through the windows of the RV. Despite the early hour, we felt very well rested given that our bodies thought we had slept in an extra hour. After breakfast, we enjoyed the best camping showers we have had in some time. The bathroom was large, clean, WARM and quaintly decorated. The showers were hot and spacious with adequate room for storage of shower materials and changing. Maybe this is why it took the girls FOREVER to get through their morning shower/dressing routine. Once everyone was ready, we drove off to empty our tanks, fill our water tank and head over to the Gettysburg National Military Park.

          We started our Gettysburg day at the Visitor Center and Museum. We checked in with the rangers about how to best schedule our day and picked up the kids’ Junior Ranger programs. We had heard that these would be particularly challenging and therefore I was eager for the kids to finally have a challenge. We were told that the best way to “do” Gettysburg was to view the film, “We are Met on a Great Battlefield” narrated by Morgan Freeman, take in the “Battle of Gettysburg” cyclorama, tour the Gettysburg Museum of the American Civil War, and then take a driving tour of the battlefield. It sounded like a pretty full day, but we purchased our tickets and got started.

          The “We are Met on a Great Battlefield” film was presented on an oversized, rounded, triple screen. It outlined the events leading up to the Civil War, and the battles leading up to Gettysburg. It covered the personnel involved and their character, story, and impact. It was very well done. From there we were ushered up an escalator to the cyclorama. The cyclorama, a very popular form of entertainment in the late 1800's, is a massive, oil-on-canvas painting presented in the round. Enhanced with landscaped foreground featuring trees, fences, and soldier paraphernalia, the three-dimensional effect surrounds the viewer standing on a central platform, giving the sensation of standing in the center of the great historic scene. It was the IMAX experience of its time. The Gettysburg Cyclorama was painted by Paul Dominique Philippoteaux, an artist who thought so highly of himself that he painted himself into the battle as his signature.  Although the original cyclorama was 42 feet high and 365 feet in circumference, the version that hangs in Gettysburg, a painstaking restoration of the original, is 27 feet high and 359 feet in circumference. The cyclorama presentation was accompanied by a narration which included sound effects and enhanced by lighting different parts of the picture at different times to illustrate what was happening and when. It was beautiful yet overwhelming. We scarcely had begun to take it all in when we were invited to exit into the museum.

          The museum was organized into twelve different sections, covering the impact, approach, cause and aftermath of the war. In addition, each day of the battle had its own room, exhibits, displays, and mini movie. It was almost too much to take in, so the mini movies helped us sort through the information. There were also several interactive computer terminals where the kids could learn about things like bugle calls, signal flags and what gear a soldier needed to pack. There was an educational portion and then a challenge test to see how the information had been assimilated. I could never improve upon my score of packing 10 of 14 necessary items in my knapsack. My unit was always marching out before I could decide what I was missing. We spent a good part of the morning in the museum, slowly moving from room to room. In no time at all it was 1pm, time for a late lunch.

          After purchasing an audio driving tour in the gift shop, we ate lunch in the RV. Then we spent the rest of the afternoon driving around the battlefield viewing the monuments, seeing the landscape and hearing a number of interesting behind the scene stories. The drive was beautiful. The air was crisp and cool, the sky was a brilliant blue and the wooded areas are still sporting some breath-taking fall foliage. Each aspect of the battle was presented. What each side was thinking, where mistakes were made and the “what ifs” of history. “What if” this message had gotten through? “What if” this regiment had held its ground? “What if” this leader had not been cut down in battle as he had? The wide variety of possibilities based on the “what ifs” was mind boggling. Also mind boggling were the numbers involved. It was one thing to read about the numbers in the museum. It was quite another to imagine the fields we were seeing covered with dead and dying men.

          There is another side of the coin to Daylight Savings Time – it gets dark earlier as well. The sun began to set around 4:30. It created a gorgeous orange glow on the horizon as a sliver of moon rose into the night. We stepped up the pace of our tour, but to no avail. We reached the Soldiers’ National Cemetery at dusk and tried to find the answers to the kids’ Junior Ranger program as darkness fell. Normally it would be fun to explore a cemetery by flashlight in the dark, but we were surrounded by signs asking us to be respectful and reminding us that the park closed at dusk. We decided that the third day of the battle and the end of our tour deserved more time. So we decided to return to where we had camped the night before and will return in the morning light to finish up.

          Our campsite was just a few minutes away and in no time we were parked, leveled, plugged in and cooking dinner. After dinner and clean up, the kids did some more math with Dad. Poor Ben spent 45 minutes on one problem while Abby whizzed through three pages. Soon everyone was ready for beds, even a bit early, in anticipation of an early start in the morning. There is still much to see in Gettysburg before we head off to our adventures in Amish country.