DC Trip, Day 1 and 2

Eight years ago, I went to DC on a business trip and spent one afternoon and evening seeing the sights. I started blogging about it, and produced four separate blog posts detailing half the day, but never finished. Well, eight years later, we'll see if I can do better!

The trip this time was to be a bit more extensive - 7 days - and involved a whole heck of a lot more sights, as we plotted a course to take us to Gettysburg, DC, Shenandoah National Park and Harper's Ferry. The trip would include 8 total states plus DC. I'll cover the trip here one or two days at a time, depending on how loquacious I get.

Day 1: Drive to Gettysburg
There's not all that much to say about driving. It's nearly 11 hours from our house to Gettysburg, and we did it in about 12 total, because we're awesome like that. PB&J in the car for lunch, and we only stopped three times on the way, I think. Blockburger kids are genetically good at long car trips. No one in our family had ever been to Pennsylvania, so that was good to cross off the list.

Once we left the highway to head for Gettysburg, we got a little bit turned around, but in our meanderings we got to see an Amish-style horse cart going down the road, and go up and down some seriously steep mountain ridges. None of us had ever really been in the Appalachians before, and while they aren't terribly high or anything, they were still impressively steep in parts.

We made it to our hotel, which was not very fancy, even by our standards, and called it a night.

Day 2: Gettysburg, Cafe Rio and Arlington
Because Day 1 was pretty lame, and had no pictures, let's go right in to Day 2: Gettysburg. We're not huge Civil War buffs at our house, but we are pretty well versed on Gettysburg, because of "The Killer Angels" and it's film adaptation, Gettysburg. We even watched the whole 4 hour, 15 minute film with the girls before we went. (Ella didn't really care, but Julia seemed to like it.)

One thing that I didn't expect was that there are monuments and markers everywhere. Every regiment has put up a statue, or cannon or marker or something wherever they were engaged there, so the roads around the battlefields were literally lined with markers.

At Gettysburg you can literally pick up a tour guide in your car to explain the sites to you as you go, but we opted for the more flexible self-guided tour, where we could skip past things as quickly as we wanted when young attention spans were getting very short.

This is a picture of a monument to Virginians who fought there, fittingly with General Lee and Traveler on top. It sits near the start of Pickett's charge. Speaking of Pickett's charge . . . .

This is the "copse of trees" (dead center in the picture) as seen from the start of Pickett's charge. At the same time it is both a long way, and not that far, as you attempt to imagine walking that distance into the face of Union cannon.

We, of course, visited Little Round Top and found the marker for the 20th Maine (and didn't take a picture, but let me google that for you)

After Gettysburg, we drove through Maryland stopping for some food . . . .

And heading to Arlington National Cemetery. Arlington, started as the home of the Custis clan (decendents of Martha Washington), and Mary Custis married Robert E. Lee, and then during the Civil War the Union took the estate and turned it into a cemetery. It's all very interesting. (Shannon has a book suggestion for you, if you want to know more.)

At Arlington, we were able to see John F. Kennedy's grave:

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the changing of the guard there:

As well as tour the house and see the cemetery in general.

We then headed to our hotel in Arlington. It was one of those fancy hotels with the exfoliating towels. You know, the ones that remove dead (and living) skin when you dry yourself off after a shower?