This morning we picked up our registration packet, looked over the silent auction items and ran into old friends. The hotel has reserved the entire rear parking lot for MGs. We are on our own today, as there are no program events today.
We decided to drive downtown for lunch and then explore the battlefield park and the visitor's center.
The town of Gettysburg is fairly small and almost everything is centered around a central roundabout downtown. It was fun seeing all the little MGs buzzing around the town. We had lunch at The Pub & Restaurant right on the roundabout.
We then drove a short distance to the Gettysburg National Military Park where we started out with a self-driving tour. They have tried to keep the battlefield looking as it did in 1863. As you drive around, it is green, quiet and peaceful. Its hard to imagine what it was like, the noisy, smoke-filled chaos during the 3 days of battle. 160,000 soldiers fought here and there were 51,000 causalities (dead, wounded and missing).
 |
| Georgia memorial |
 |
| Mississippi memorial |
 |
| Robert E. Lee memorial |
After the driving tour, we went to the visitor center. There was a very good movie that explained the battle. After the movie, we viewed the Cyclorama painting, in the same building. Shortly after the civil war, there were many "in the round" paintings made and displayed, but today, there are only two remaining - the one in Gettysburg and one in Atlanta. The painting is about 42 feet tall and 377 feet in circumference and weighs about 22,000 pounds! The painting is of one of the battles, and with the three dimensional artifacts and sculptures in the foreground, its difficult to tell where the canvas ends and the artifacts begin.
After visiting the museum for awhile, we left to go back to the hotel. However, at this time, the car decided not to start! It was obviously a problem with the ignition switch. It was about 5:00 PM, so I called Moss Motors and had them overnight a switch to the hotel. With the help of some other MGers there, we pushed the car to get it started and drove back to the hotel. The nice thing about MGs is that even kids can push them! At the hotel, I started disassembling the steering column to get ready for the new part, which should arrive tomorrow.
Luckily, Gettysburg has a bus system that runs a shuttle every hour from the hotel to downtown. Since our car was not running and we weren't sure about parking, a group of us took the bus downtown for dinner. We had a nice dinner at the Springhouse Tavern, which is in the basement of the Dobbin House, which is reported to be the oldest building in Gettysburg. It looks like an old tavern and is lit by candles, making it very hard to read the menu!
 |
| The Springhouse Tavern |
No comments:
Post a Comment