Category Archives: American History

Gettysburg and beyond

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We continued on with our American History tour by going to Gettysburg after DC.  It wasn’t too far and we were able to get a spot in a Passport America RV park (Artillery Ridge RV Park).  It was clear when we got there and were able to drive around the town a bit.  We went to the NPS visitor’s center.  It was very disappointing.

At the visitor’s center, there is a movie to watch, and a museum to look through.  Unfortunately, even though it is technically a National Park a separate entity runs the movie and museum.  You have to PAY for these extra items!  That really left a bad taste in my mouth.  If this is run by the NPS and taxpayers fund the NPS, why do the taxpayers have to pay AGAIN to see our American history?  I guess I got spoiled by the DC area and the western US area of parks.  In the west, I don’t think this kind of setup would work.

The next day it was raining, pretty heavily at times.  One option is to go on the Auto Tour of the entire area.  There are over 1300 different memorials scattered throughout Gettysburg.  Memorials to states, battalions, brigades, individuals, etc.  It is impressive to see.  The Auto Tour takes you through many of them and here are some shots:

Gettysburg was also where President Lincoln gave his address.  We had to go see that, in the pouring rain:

We only spent one day in Gettysburg as there was a biker rally coming in shortly so it was time to move on.  It was raining again in the AM and Roxie tried our her new rain gear from Ikea:

We weren’t quite sure where to go next so we headed West and ended up going through Hagerstown, MD.  Roxie has been in the process of renewing her RN license and she needs to get fingerprinted for the state of CA.  However, since we are not in CA she cannot use the Livescan electronic machines but has to get her fingerprints physically on a specific form and send them in.

As we were driving into Hagerstown we saw a for the local sheriff’s office.  This is a location where fingerprinting happens.  Alas, they did not do it there but in further research, there was a gun shop that did fingerprinting on certain Saturdays, which happened to be the next day.  So what to do?  Stay at Walmart:

The next day we got Roxie’s fingerprints, went by the FedexOffice shop to mail them.  Oops.   They were being sent to a PO box.  FedEx doesn’t do that and the Post Office closes in about 20 minutes and we are about 10 miles away.  But we made it.  Whew!  We got many things done in Hagerstown, we even got one of these:

This thing keeps the ice for a long time, even when we don’t keep it the trailer.

We left Hagerstown with a specific destination in mind but it was a little bit away.  We needed to stop somewhere for the night, and why not break the streak, another Walmart!  However, on the way to this Walmart, we stopped by the Johnstown Flood National Memorial.  Let me talk about the road that I took to get there though.

I am convinced that with Pennsylvania highways, the more digits the road has, the smaller and worse it is.  We came in on PA 869.  Luckily Roxie slept through the whole thing.  At the start of one stretch, there was a sign that stated, “11 miles ahead No vehicles over 108″ in width”.  I did some quick calculations, we are 8.5 feet in width, that is 102″, we are good.  Of course, I still had some trepidation until I came to the restriction area.  It was a bridge they were working on and only had a single lane.  That is not too bad, but this one had a left-hand turn immediately after going through the choke point.  I went real slow, deliberate and straight and made it through, Roxie snoozing away.

We learned about the Johnstown flood, which my mother says we had a relative that lived through it.  Here is a picture from above where the dam used to be:

It appears they did not rebuild it this time, even though they fixed or rebuilt it about 10 times previously!

Off to Walmart for the night:

The next stop we are going to stay at for a week and try to get some rest (right).

America’s Historic Triangle

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As we left our ‘moochdocking’ in NC we headed north to stop in Williamsburg.  We wanted to see “America’s Historic Triangle”, this would be Williamsburg, Jamestown, and Yorktown.  We found a location north of town a bit that took Passport America for 2 nights and a Good Sam discount for the other nights.  It was the Williamsburg Christian Retreat Center.  Here was our spot:

The first day we went to the Williamsburg visitor center to figure out what we might do.  They had a 7-day pass but we determined we would get a 3-day pass to the Historic Williamsburg area and do the other two locations separately.  The second day,  we decided to go to Yorktown and visit the American Revolution Museum.  It was a very nice museum with many interesting displays with a multimedia theater that was amazing.  They also had a ‘camp’ that was recreated extremely authentically (a precursor to what we will see in Williamsburg).  Roxie even got to sit down with George Washington:

We got to the NPS area of Yorktown after it closed but were able to do the Auto Tour to see different areas of the final revolutionary battle.

The next day we went to Historic Williamsburg on the first day of the three-day pass.  Historic Williamsburg is the historic part of Williamsburg that has been completely restored to around 1780 even along with all the residents who man the stores and walk the streets.  It is very well done.  Here are some street shots:

One of the tours we were able to take was that of the Governor’s Palace (the other shots are swords on the walls inside):

One of the best parts of the entire experience were the reenactments/plays that were performed to give you a feeling of what times were then.  Here is a shot of George Wythe and Thomas Jefferson (right) during one of the performances:

We went to the town on the first and third day of our 3-day pass.  We missed the middle day (more on that later) but each of the two days we were there we ate at a restaurant on site that was also set in that time period.  Since there is only two of us we were told that if we were willing to share our table we could get seated sooner.  Fine with us, we love to meet new people.  The first day a teacher sat down with us, she was here for an educational seminar and was actually staying in the town!  Very nice to meet her.

The third day we were seated with a wonderful couple where we found out that we had many similarities and realized that there are very strong people in this world.  This couple is definitely in that group!  They even took time at the end to pray for Roxie and her back.  Very thankful to meet them!

So what happened to our ‘middle’ day at Williamsburg.  We were contacted by Steve and Angelique to see if we wanted to go to Busch Gardens at Williamsburg as they have a season pass and can get friends in free in June.  OK!  We went to Busch Gardens.  Roxie and I remember going to Busch Gardens in Southern California.  It was primarily a beer tasting venue (which my Dad loved) and a lot of lush greenery and birds/animals/etc on display.  This Busch Gardens was a full on amusement park with rides and shows.  It was a very enjoyable time but a lot of walking!  Plus it was hot and humid.  Many thanks, again, to Steve and Angelique.

The final day of our touring we were in Jamestown.  This was the first settlement of Colonists in the New World.  There was a very nice museum, like in Yorktown, Jamestown Settlement.  They also had a representative town set in that time.  Here are a few shots:

The NPS had an area also that was where the original Jamestown was located.  It was surreal to walk around the old town and see what they had to endure.  Here are some pictures of Captain John Smith and Pocahontas, plus a memorial obelisk:

After almost a week it is time to move on.  We are still being slammed by weird weather and a lot of humidity.

Where will we go for the 4th of July?