USA holiday Gettysburg first visit

 Finally I was going back to Gettysburg. It had been nearly ten years. The last time had been during the 150th anniversary. That was cool. We walked Pickett's charge at the exact same time at the same day 150 years later and we saw a lot of the reenactments. For many years if I went to Gettysburg during the anniversary. It was great fun but it had some drawbacks as well.

More expensive

The town would be absolutely crowded

So would the battlefield

The humid heat of July could get to me

In that regard a May visit was much nicer. We headed out in the morning and it was about 75 minutes drive from the airbnb to Gettysburg where we arrived around ten.

As Koen had never been we decided to do the visitor centre first. I may not be making friends here but I am not a big fan of the new visitor centre. True, it gives a good overview of the whole civil war and the battle and it looks really slick. There lies the rub. I don't like slick. I much prefer the old one with its shelves full of artifacts that focused solely on the battle itself. And I very much miss the portrait of Longstreet they had up in the old one as I have no idea what happened to it. Probably in storage somewhere. It has also become pretty expensive to do. The ticket does also include the introductionary film and the cyclorama. It had been ages since I saw the cyclorama and that was in it's old location as well.

After a snack in the restaurant it was time to head out to the battlefield itself. A glorious day around 25 degrees, not too hot. We followed the stops on the map. Sounding like a nagging old person here but I miss the old audiotours. Had them both on cassette and on CD. Yet rental cars don't come with cd players any more. You could listen to them when you drove from stop to stop. I tried with the american battlefield trust app on my phone. They are great and pack a lot of information yet I did not find it easy to use them on the day as they do not use the same stops as the national parks do and do not give you the driving information. I prefer to watch their information later at home.

Because I know Gettysburg fairly well we found our bearings quickly enough. The first few stops mostly cover the first day of the fighting and I have to guiltily admit that this holds a little less attention for me. It does surprise me that two of the magnificent statues of the first day are not on the tour route. Those of John Buford and John Reynolds. Thankfully there is a ranger station and parking space opposite yet you still have to cross a busy road to get a good view. Of course the ranger on duty agreed with me that this should really be included in the tour. :) He also showed us a route to get as close to little round top as we could as it is closed for renovation at the time.

We did this next, diverging from the tour and drove to the road beneath little round top and made a couple of stops there. I did not remember it looking so marshy and was later told that was due to bevers building a dam. We also climbed Devil's den of course staying on the paths as not to damage the old rocks.

After that we did a large chunk of West Confederate Avenue. I think this is my favorite part of the battlefield. When I am there I always remember that magical July morning in 1998 when we there at the crack of dawn and walked the whole of the Avenue to the site were the Longstreet statue would be unveiled later that morning. That was a morning to never forget and of course I spent some time at the monument now as well. I am one of those who like the monument being at ground level. Or at least don't mind it. It suits the man who as a leader showed compassion to his soldiers. It is in a way fitting that there would be so much controversy over this statue as it was with so much he did in his life.

We had dinner in a nice restaurant in town and sat there resting our feet until it was time for the tour I had booked for the evening.

Since the pandemic I had loved listening to the battle for Gettysburg podcast it helped me not get bored when I went om my early morning walks around town. If you book a guide through the park you don't always get to choose and I wanted a guide whom I was sure knew a lot about Longstreet. I have been told it is rare now but in 1994 I ended up with a guide who was seriously anti-Longstreet and did not want that experience again.

I knew I wanted Jim Hessler and I am so thankfully that he was able to make time to do an evening tour with us. Jim has written three books about Gettysburg they are all well worth a read so check them out.

I had requested a counter march tour. To take us over the ground that the First Corps counter march covered. All of it is actually not on park grounds today and a lot of it has been lost due to housing developments. But most of the roads are still there and some of the authentic houses still stand. This is something I could never had done on my own and this is not the information you can learn from books. It has to be taken in by standing on the ground. 

As there was some time left we also covered the Peach orchard and the wheatfield. Both places that I had seriously neglected during previous visits so it was a great experience to do them with a guide. It was now getting later in the evening. And I think this was my first time on the battlefield at dusk. Stunning views of the fields and the monuments. All in all a very succesful day.