Sorry for not posting yesterday, by the time I got back to the trailer, got something to eat and checked email it was past time for bed. It was an interesting day for me though as I took the time to drive over to the town of Harper's Ferry and check it out. A wonderfully preserved National Park now, I spent the whole afternoon wandering the streets looking at all the old buildings and reading about it's history. But I want to wait a bit on telling about it until I can post a few pictures along with it, so I am going to go back to the day before yesterday and talk about my trip to Gettysburg and post a couple of pictures from that trip first.

   Before I get into that though let me say a little bit about today as it had an interesting thing or two occur during it. I was up way to early this morning considering when I finally went to bed last night. (2:00 a.m.) But it was moving day today and that always takes a bit of time to get up and pack everything away. Was on the road by 10:00 anyway, and as there was only about 3 hours of travel today there wasn't a real big hurry. Emma took me west from where I had been camped, into West Virginia first and then into Virginia itself as I turned south with the highway. I had about 45 miles to go when I decided to stop and grab a bite to eat. I had already gassed up earlier, gas was down to $3.45/gal in Virginia, so that was a pleasant surprise. Spent a good hour eating lunch and reading some of my book, also did a quick check of email and facebook, but didn't stick around for to long as there was no place to plug the computer in so my battery was going dead in a real hurry.

    Once back on the road it was just a few minutes south of where I had eaten when one of the trailer tires blew out. Heard it go and looked back in time to see little bitty 'Road Gators' flying every where. Lucky for me no one else was close enough to be effected and I managed to pull the truck and trailer off the highway with no problems. It is nice to have dual axles and tires so I thought the left over tire on one side had just managed to hold up all the weight that suddenly got placed on it. What actually happened though was that the tread on the front, curb side, tire just delaminated and blew all over the place. The tire was still inflated and everything. Of course I changed it anyway and got back on the road in a little more than 30 mins. Did find out that this wheel changing block I bought and have been carrying around now for several years is pretty worthless. You are suppose to be able to back the good tire up onto it and the other tire is suppose to be easy to remove then, without the need to break out a jack. But it's not tall enough for 15" tires, maybe those little bitty 12" ones. Anyway; it will be one more piece of stuff I can leave home next time.

    The rest of the trip into 'Misty Mountain Resort' camp ground was without incident. They even had one place left just for me. Looks like there will be plenty of things to do around the area. Thomas Jefferson's 'Montecello' is near by and there seem to be several caverns in the area. Probably plenty to do in town also once I go and get a new spare tire put on my rim. Will keep the old one to return to Discount Tire's once I get in an area that has one of their stores. Right now I'm just happy to be snug in a nice campground with no need to move for the next week.

    In the meantime here are the photo's from Gettysburg.

One of the things I did at the park was take a 2 hour narrated bus tour, and I'm very glad that I did it that way too. Way to much stuff to look at and try to read about on your own. Our first stop was here at a place known as McPherson's Barn. A bit north and a little east of the town of Gettysburg, it was here on July 1, 1863 at 8:00 a.m. that a group of Union Cavalry met the front tiers of the Confederate infantry and commenced the battle of Gettysburg. Heavy fighting took place all day and spread along the ridge line as additional forces on both sides arrived. By the end of the day the Confederates had pushed the Union forces back almost a mile to the outskirts of the town itself. The Union forces did delay the advancing Rebel forces long enough for additional forces from Fredrick to march north and join up with General Meade's army.

This park has more monuments in it, 3,000+, than any other park in the country. The two here are General Buford of the Union forces, on the ground, he was in charge of the forces that kept the Confederates at bay on Day 1, and General Meade, on the horse, who was in charge of all of the Union forces.  

This small area of trees, about 40 acres in all, was the scene of one major skirmish on the first day when a group of Confederate infantry tried to push through it to some high ground and were met by a force of Union soldiers. In less than an hour of fighting 6,000 men and boys lay dead and dying here. To put that in some perspective, the invasion of Europe on DDay during WWII had a lot fewer casualties from both sides. A sobering thought indeed.

The Confederate forces, 70,000 of them, and their commanding officer, General Robert E. Lee, ended the 1st day on some high ground just west and a bit south of Gettysburg known as Seminary Ridge. Many state monuments are located around the battle field, I think this one was to a battalion of Virginia infantry, but I'm not positive. I took other photo's of monuments, but I think this enough.

From Seminary Ridge the Union forces of some 93,000 men could be seen deployed along a hook shaped line several miles long known as Cemetery Hill. Starting just east of Gettysburg it stretched south to the two hills you see in this photo, Little Roundtop in the center and Big Roundtop on the right.

Fighting went on all day on July 2nd, but it wasn't until around 4:00 p.m. that Lt General Longstreet directed his Confederate cavalry to attack Union forces below and a bit north of Little Roundtop. Because of a mistake, or actually dereliction of duty, the jury is still out on what happened, Union forces that should of been on top of Little Roundtop were actually nearly a mile west and were engaged by Longstreet's cavalry, forcing Longstreet to veer east instead of going further north along Cemetery Ridge. It turns out that this may be the only reason the southern forces didn't win the battle that afternoon as they ended up fighting several battle's at the base of Little Roundtop, including the battle of the 'Wheat Field', The Peach Orchard', 'Rum Run' and 'Little Roundtop' itself. The Union forces barely managed to stave off defeat but at a cost of tens of thousands of dead men. The Wheat Field battle alone, a field the size of a large football stadium field had more than 4,000 dead and wounded.

During this era of war there were really only three types of fighting units used on land. The first of course was the infantry, single men with a single gun that fired maybe 1-2 rounds per minute. You also had the cavalry which also used guns, pikes, sabers and sometimes just ran people over. And then you had the artillery. By this time cannons could accurately deliver iron cannon balls 2-4 miles away. Solid balls would be used against other artillery, buildings and even to wipe out lines of men if needed. A much more deadly weapon though was the use of 'canister shot', which was essentially a break apart cartridge that held 12-30 smaller iron balls. When fired the canister flew apart and pieces of it and the smaller balls would decimate anything that got in it's way. (We just seem to be able to find new and better ways to kill and maim each other I guess).

A view from Little Roundtop. The Peach Orchard and Wheat Field are just over that 1st line of trees. This field was the scene of thousands of dead and dying men. The Union forces managed to hang on to the high ground though. If the Confederate forces had captured this site they would of had a direct cannon shot all the way down the rest of the Union line.

Even here on what was once a bloody battlefield, life goes on.

One of the artillery pieces on top of Little Roundtop.

Inside of the main parks building is what is known as the 'Cyclorama', a large round theatre that holds a painting done in 1884 by a French painter, Paul Philippoteaux. 377 feet long and more than 24 feet tall it tells the whole tale of the battle of Gettysburg in amazing detail. Found and restored by the Park Service it is a priceless treasure of history. In this scene you see the culmination of the 3rd day of fighting, July 3, 1863.

Late in the afternoon Lee sends 12,000 men head on into what he believes is a break in Meads line. In an attack that is now known as 'Picketts Charge' Lee's men fall upon 7,000 Union soldiers and are repulsed after more than an hour of intense fighting. In the end Lee will lose more than 5,000 men in this one battle alone and will be forced to retreat west and then south the way he had come. Being denied a victory against the Union in what was Union Territory was a historical precedent. The war would continue for another two years and cost hundreds of thousands of more lives. But Gettysburg will be remembered as a turning point in the war.

Cemetery Ridge was named that because of the cemetery that was on it, and is still there. The trees were not there though, they are newer additions to the site.

More than 51,000 - 63,000 ( figures vary.... a lot), men were killed or seriously wounded in 3 days of fighting at Gettysburg. It took more than 3 months to get all of the dead collected and buried, most in mass graves. It was said that the stench could be smelled more than 30 miles down wind. It must of been a most horrific scene to gaze out upon at the time.

On November 19, 1863 then President Abraham Lincoln visited Gettysburg in order to dedicate a new National Cemetery there in honor of the Union war dead. Lincolns speech was 272 words long and took only a little more than 2 minutes to deliver. Now known as the Gettysburg Address it is considered to be the greatest speech ever given and a 'master-piece of the English language'.

The cemetery is still being used today. I am not sure if it is dedicated only to those who serve in the military and their loved ones, but it seemed like it might be.

The day for me was one of confusion as I have asked myself these past several years, as I have toured portions of the south and east, if it would of been worth it to me to go to war like all of these men and women did. Not just this war, but the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, WWI and WWII, etc. My best guess is that I would of, but it is still confusing to me as I can see how it would of been possible to defend either side in most of these conflicts. War never seems to be as cut and dried as some would like you to think it is. The only real truth is that a lot of people will be hurt and a lot will die and the question will always remain in the end.... was it worth it.