Hiked 0.0 miles, staying at Colton Motel in Gettysburg.
Today we took the day off to be tourists. After a delicious breakfast at a nearby diner we headed over to the main museum. Before entering the museum proper, we watched a half hour video talking about background, an overview of the battle and aftermath. It was narrated by Morgan Freeman, so you know it's good. Seriously though it was really well done and was a great overview without getting too in depth.
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| Cemetery Hill |
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| Cemetery Hill |
After the video we headed upstairs to the "cyclorama". Now based on the name you might think this is a panorama somehow powered by riding a bicycle or something, but it is actually an enormous painting. The painting is 42 feet tall and is 360 degrees on the inside of a round structure with a circumference of 372 feet. The painting was created in 1884 and gives essentially a 3D view of the battle of Gettysburg from behind union lines. The painting is incredibly detailed and is awe inspiring to view.
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| Cyclorama |
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| Cyclorama |
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| Cyclorama |
The museum proper is enormous. I spent four hours going through it and felt rushed. It is well organized, has excellent information and thousands of artifacts. I think it is one of the best war museums I've been to. If you only see one thing in Gettysburg, do the museum.
The reason I didn't spend all day there was we had other touristy plans to accomplish. After a quick lunch and trip to the hotel to change into hiking shoes, we walked over to the Virginia monument to meet up with a ranger led program. Every day there is a 2 hour battlewalk, in which they walk you through some part of the battle on the field. Of all the ones l saw listed I got very lucky because today was the one I was most interested in. The walk led us through Pickett's Charge as viewed from the Confederate perspective.
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| Starting to walk Pickett's Charge, sorry folks this is the only photo as my camera battery died |
Walking through the battlefield as the ranger talked gave a unique sense of scale that you just can't get from diagrams and pictures. Hearing that 13000 Confederates marched on Union lines and having the ranger point out landmarks of where the actual ends of the line extended was two completely different things. It was awe inspiring to see that and try to picture the number of people marching shoulder to shoulder that could cover that distance (the line during the charge stretched about a mile). Also seeing the distance in person that the soldiers had to walk to close with Union Lines was staggering. Having to walk a mile through open field while being showered with artillery and rifle fire would have been frightening.
The ranger was very informative and the program was fantastic. The battlefield itself is very well preserved and as a result many of the fence lines and buildings still stand as they were in 1863. For someone like me who is interested in history the day was very enjoyable. I would have loved to see more of the monuments or other parts of the battlefield like Little Round Top, but unfortunately the area is not very pedestrian friendly and a car is needed to see a lot of that stuff.
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