We wanted to go tour Gettysburg before we left Pennsylvania, but it was close to 100 miles away, so it would have been a 200-mile trip. We also wanted to take a Washington DC bus tour, which left from Gettysburg. So, we decided to leave Hershey Park a couple of days early and parked our RV a couple of nights somewhere in Gettysburg. We were too cheap to pay the price for a private RV Park ($44 for Thursday and $77 for Friday) so we parked our Journey at a truck stop, which worked great. It was the first time we encountered a Walmart that would not allow us to stay in their parking lot. They said it was a town ordinance that would not allow it.
We got to Gettysburg about noon and spent the rest of the day sightseeing. We went to the National Military Park Museum and Visitor Center where we watched a film, went through the museum, and watched the Diorama program. It was an amazing program where you see the entire battlefield in 3-D miniature as you hear the story of the three-day Civil War battle and how it progressed, with all the lights and sound effects. This battle was between the Confederate General Robert E. Lee and the Union Major General George Meade.
After watching the film and program, we boarded a battlefield tour bus to see where the action actually took place. It was a three-day battle, won by the North, but leaving over 51,000 soldiers dead, wounded, and missing.
The battle began with the North in the trees behind the McPherson barn (which still stands today) and the South advancing across the fields towards them.
As we drove along, our guide took us through all three days of the battle, starting on July 1, 1863, and pretty much ending late in the afternoon of July 3 with a two-hour cannonade called "Pickett's Charge." Lee's army began retreating the next day, July 4, 1863, leaving 23,000 Union soldiers and 28,000 Confederate solders killed, wounded, captured, or missing.
Our tour was only about 3 hours, but you could spend several days looking at all of the monuments and memorials on the 24-mile tour of the battlegrounds.
This is the Eternal Light Peace Memorial. Seventy-five years after the Battle of Gettysburg, over 1,800 Civil War veterans helped dedicate it to "peace eternal in a nation united." There is kind of a spiritual feeling as you tour the battlegrounds.
After the Civil War was over, the Soldier's National Cemetery was dedicated on November 19, 1863. After the dedication speech, President Abraham Lincoln (not being the principle speaker) was asked to make "a few appropriate remarks." His speech contains 272 words and took about two minutes to deliver, is now known as the "Gettysburg Address." I am sure that many of us had to memorize at least part of it in school!
After the battlefield tour, we toured around town. This is the train station where Abraham Lincoln arrived when he was invited to say "a few appropriate remarks" at the dedication of the National Cemetery. It also served as a field hospital during the Battle of Gettysburg, transporting 15,000 wounded soldiers after the battle. There were quite a few buildings around town that still bear the bullets holes in their walls from the battle.
After spending the day in Gettysburg, the next morning we caught a bus at the Gettysburg
Walmart at 5:15 am and went on a tour to Washington DC. Terry felt like he was back on the old Huskey bus driving the team to a basketball game!
Our first stop was Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. It was amazing--rows and rows of headstones. It was a place that made you talk quietly!
We visited the graves of President John F. Kennedy, his wife Jacqueline, and their two children, where there is an eternal flame burning. President Kennedy's brothers graves are all nearby.
We hurried so that we could make the 9:00 am changing of the guards at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. It was very impressive and solemn. There is a guard on formal duty there 24/7 and they change guards every hour. It is a real honor to be one of the guards and it is a two-year assignment where that is their only life--guarding the tomb.
In the Arlington Cemetery Visitors Center, a handmade quilt was on display honoring men and women who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Lost Heroes Art Quilt features 82 American military heroes, each square stitched together with childhood photos and brief life stories. They represent all 50 states. It was quite a quilt.
The quilt block from Idaho honored Carrie French from Caldwell, Idaho. She died at 19 years old when an explosive device hit the front of her convoy vehicle and detonated in Iraq.
After Arlington Cemetery, we stopped at some war memorials. This is the Vietnam Memorial Wall.
Terry had seen the portable wall that traveled all over the United States, but he was excited to see the real one. We found the name of his buddy, Larry Shea, who was killed in Vietnam just a couple of months before Terry came home from there.
There were some really cool sculptures depicting the Vietnam War.
This one honored the women in the Vietnam War, who were mostly nurses.
We saw the memorial to the Korean War. It was really impressive. It had statues of a whole group of men walking across the field in their military gear.
The last one we went to was the World War II Memorial. It was in a big circle with a fountain in the middle. On one side was a pavilion depicting the Pacific and the other side was one depicting the Atlantic--with all of the US states, territories, and District of Columbia in between--symbolizing a war fought across two oceans.
These were the pillars with the state names on them.
We found the one for Idaho.
The Lincoln Memorial was close to the Viet Nam Wall and the Korean War Memorial. It was really cool. It had a lot of stairs leading up to it.
I climbed to the top.
It was worth the climb to see the "larger than life" statue of Abraham Lincoln.
As you can see by this very zoomed-in picture, Terry opted to stay at the bottom of the stairs! (The yellow circles on us were there to help our tour guide keep track of us!)
From the Lincoln memorial, looking across the water, you can see the Washington Memorial, with the Capital Building just to the right of it.
The Washington Memorial is verrrry tall and is encircled with American flags. You used to be able to take an elevator to the top but the structure of the memorial was damaged in a storm so now you can't use the elevator until the memorial is repaired. That was quite okay with Terry, since he is not too fond of heights. At least he didn't have to "wimp" out on me, again!
After all of the memorial stops, we had three hours to spend at the Smithsonian Institution. There are 15 different museums and displays to choose from! We could have spent a whole week there! We chose to go to the National Air and Space Museum first. It was amazing! There were 23 galleries, exhibiting hundreds of aircraft, spacecraft, missiles, rockets and other flight related artifacts (words from the flier.)
What is really amazing is there is no charge for any of these museums or exhibits. But, there were donation boxes around. From the different kinds of bills, people from many countries visit there.
Terry is looking inside the Apollo 11 command module. It is a pretty tight fit! I don't think the astronauts could be over-weight at all.
While Viking 1 and 2 were on Mars, this third vehicle was used on Earth to simulate their behavior and to test their responses to radio commands.
I have always thought it would be so fun to hang-glide, if I could ever get enough nerve to take that first step off the cliff!
This was an early Curtiss motorcycle Terry thought was really cool! He thought the pickers (Mike & Frank) would like to find something like this in someone's barn.
We ended up with enough time to spend a little while in the National Museum of the American Indian. We chose it because it was close to the Air and Space Museum, and we were getting pretty tired by this time. We watched a film in there that had a very unique stage. We were in a small, round room with tiered, bench-type seats on the perimeter and a large rock formation in the middle. There were blankets hung above the rock. The rock, the blankets, and the ceiling were the screen for Who We Are, a 13-minute film that celebrates the vitality and diversity of Native life. It was really good.
We got back on the bus and were ready to sit for a while. We drove around the downtown DC streets to see some sights. Terry was really glad he was not the bus driver! This building is the US Mint where some of our money is made. It was a little hard getting pictures while the bus was moving.
I got a really good picture of the Jefferson Memorial. The tour guide told us exactly when to take it in order to see Jefferson through the pillars. I was lucky!
The Capitol is a very impressive building. I would really have liked to tour the inside of it and also the White House--maybe another time.
Terry got this picture of the White House as the bus was moving. Great shot! Well, after the downtown tour, we headed back towards Pennsylvania. We stopped along the way and had a great buffet dinner and got back to our "home" at about 8:00 pm. It was a long day, but we had a really good time. We decided that a tour bus was a great way to visit Washington DC!
After leaving Gettysburg, PA, we went to Stratton, VA, where our nephews, Todd and Tyler, live with their little families. Tyler just bought a home there last spring and he had enough room for us to park there. His home is really nice. Todd and his family came over and took us on a tour of their townhouse--also very nice. After going with them to buy some live crabs (which were cooked in big pots in the parking lot before we brought them home) we spent the rest of the evening with them at Tyler's home.
Tyler and Crystal fixed a dish called "shrimp boil." I couldn't figure out why they were putting newspaper on the table and thought maybe they didn't have any tablecloths. Before I could offer them one, they dumped the whole pot of shrimp boil, along with corn on the cob and the whole crabs, in the middle of the table. They informed us that this is a traditional meal from the Philippines, where Todd's wife, Jackie, is from. We had rice with it, and no one used any plates, bowls, or eating utensils! We all ate off of the table, using just our hands! What a fun time! Clean-up was a breeze!
Here's Terry, Tyler, Crystal, Jackie, and Todd, enjoying our meal.
The boys, Jonra (Todd and Jackie's son) and Denim (Tyler and Crystal's son) were good boys--lots of fun to be around. They made me miss our grandkids. We all stayed up pretty late watching some of our home movies. We had one of Tyler crawling for the first time, and Todd is only four years old. It was lots of fun. Thanks so much to Tyler and Crystal for their great hospitality! It was fun seeing all of them.
