Vacation--Day Three Gettysburg

Gettysburg was high on our list of things we wanted to see. I knew it would a really neat place to visit, but I wasn't prepared for how incredibly beautiful it was!

The area surrounding the visitors center was FILLED with black-eyed susans. It felt like there were flowers for miles around you. I'm not sure how long it took them to cover such vast areas with the flowers, but the effect is incredible. We had to take a little while and get some pictures.
The national park service offers Junior Ranger programs at a lot of the parks/historical areas that it runs. It is free to do, and the kids get a little patch and learn something while they do it. Gettysburg is one of the parks that offers the program so we planned our schedule on the different activities that we did to get the Junior Ranger badges.

One activity was to attend a live re-enactment and ask the soldiers some questions. This is a group of Confederate soldiers giving a demonstration on firing techniques. At one point they had a timed drill to see who could fire the most shots in a minute--the winner got in a third shot just as the time expired.

I loved these pictures that Matt took--they are three taken right in a row and it seems his camera was faster than the smoke from the gun.


Alex was terrified by not impressed with the shooting and would not go near a gun for the rest of the trip--in fact in the gift shop he wouldn't even go near the toy guns!

After the demonstration the soldiers marched back to their camp and talked with anyone who had questions. Caroline and Carter got to hold a musket (a kid in front of them asked if he could shoot it....um no.)
Then I got the kids ready to ask the soldiers some questions--we talked about it for a while and come up with some questions we could ask. We then found a soldier to ask the questions to. Our conversation went something like this:

Caroline: How far do you have to walk in a day?

Soldier: Not far--just about 50 fee to that field up there

Me (trying to salvage this): How far is typical for you to walk?

Soldier: That's typical--just from here in camp to that field.

Me (still trying to salvage--make this interesting to the kids): What kinds of food do you typically eat?

Soldier: um...yesterday I had (named 3 regular foods)...same today. That is all really.

Me.......

Then we left. It was not the great learning experience I had wanted this to be for the kids. All the other soldiers were showing kids things and talking to them--we apparently picked the dud. Fabulous.

Walking back to our car from the demonstration we passed a lot of memorials to the confederate army--it was great to read about the battle that had happened on the field and the memorials given to the soldiers.

Then we climbed a huge tower and looked out over the battlefield.

We went back to the visitor's center and watched a facinating movie on the battle, saw the Gettysburg Cyclorama (now the kids want to see the Cyclorama about the Battle of Atlanta) and went through the museum.

After we had finished everything the kids had earned their Junior Ranger badges.
Alex hadn't earned one (you have to be 5), but he got to wear the hat and take a picture too :)