Weird Side of Gettysburg

On Tuesday the Lime Family took a day trip to Gettysburg. We decided to do the deal where you buy a cassette or CD and follow the map and the recording through the park. It was the first time the darling Limelets had the opportunity to experience the grand history that is Gettysburg. It was as exciting and moving and educational as you would expect such an important site to be, but knowing us you also have to expect some weirdness....Come along for our field trip, won't you?

Nothing weird in this shot. It's just an example of what I find so beautiful about my state, the rolling farmlands. Gettysburg is surrounded by scenes like this. So many of the battlefields were basically on farmland.

Here's something else distinctive in Pennsylvania, a group of Amish or Mennonite folks. I can identify which of those two sects by the buggies they drive. Unfortunately, this was weirdness #1, they came in on an air conditioned tour bus so I can't tell you if the are Amish or Mennonite. They arrived at the Eternal Light Peace Memorial as we were leaving it.

Another person we met at that site was an Irish fellow who participates in US civil War re-enactments in the UK. That quite honestly astonished me and also qualifies as weirdness in my book (although a nice kind). I am so accustomed to Europeans who find the American sense of history laughable since we can't go back 1000 years in recorded time. It was really touching to hear about this fellow's exploits as re-enactor and witness his thrill at being able to come see these sites with his own eyes after having studied them from afar for so long.

Here is the inscription at the base of the Eternal Peace Light Memorial. It reads "Peace Eternal in a Nation United." It was dedicated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt 75 years after the end of the war. It was kind of amazing to think that 1800 veterans from both sides of the conflict attended the dedication just a short time before we entered WW2.

There are lots of low stone walls all over the battlefields. One thing Pennsylvania is noted for besides rolling farmlands is rocky soil. All those nice ice age glaciers blessed us with what Pennsylvania farmers refer to as our most prolific crop...rocks. Here we see one of the casualties of a 95 degree July day in Gettysburg slumped over a battlefield stone wall near the 20th Maine memorial. Just imagine marching or fighting in that kind of heat in a wool uniform, which is what the soldiers did since the battle took place July 1-3, 1863. Come on, kiddo, you can walk around a little while longer.

Here we have a 5 second re-enactment of Pickett's Charge by Mr. Lime and Isaac. Please disregard they are running the wrong way so it would more likely be a retreat than a charge (picky lot aren't you?), have no weapons, and there are only two of them. Isn't revisionist history wonderfully fun?

Of all the minor weirdness we saw at Gettysburg, nothing quite compared to this sight we witnessed at Little Round Top where Brig. General Meade defended the Union position. I dunno, I guess you'd call it Big Round Bottom, but I personally find it in defensible. As I was writing this post I thought of how wonderfully informative RennyBA is in his posts about Norway. I thought, gee it would be nice to do a post of that caliber. Then I realized it was Wednesday, which requires weirdness, and saw this guy in his very special underpants and thought of Simply Me and her fascination with BTExpress's behind and combined information with weirdness and derrieres. See what the heat does to my blogging process?....Warps it terribly! Hope you enjoyed the tour.