21st – 27th Sept
For the non-Americans, and the non-civil war enthusiasts in the rest of the world, Gettysburg was the site of one of the bloodiest battles of the civil war. Fought over 3 days from 1st – 3rd July 1863 this was a pivotal meeting of the Unionists and Confederates and the preserved historical detail of the battlefields and military manoeuvres over those days is impeccable. The whole area is dotted with countless military memorials.
This small farming town accidentally became the meeting place for the two armies and was unfortunate to have some perfect topography for a battle of infantry, calvary and canons. (In my mind, infantry vs canons are a bad military combination from an infantry point of view.)
Here is my Gettysburg summary:
Tens of thousands of soldiers from North and South died. Thousands of horses who couldn’t care less about neo-natal American politics died. One unlucky civilian in the town was hit by a stray bullet that entered her bedroom and died. The Unionists won. The town spent weeks dealing with rotting corpses and months tending to wrecked humans. The town and battlefields were very quickly designated a site of historical importance and a war memorial, thus preserving it amazingly. President Lincoln came and did his famous ‘Gettysburg Address’ (-worth looking up). Now busloads and busloads of people come to visit and buy tat. And here we are too. We had planned just one night here. Just long enough to do a guided bus tour and have a mooch around.
And so to the ‘Low’.
As we arrived into Gettysburg early on a Friday afternoon Big Dave started to make some very worrying screeching noises. As we pulled up to the bus tour car park we noted he was losing some oily fluid from the engine bay. This wasn’t good. We cancelled our tour, limped the three miles to our camp and after half an hour of anxious phone calls miraculously found a garage that could fit us in on a Friday afternoon to have a look. We quickly off-loaded Tin Can and screeched our way to the garage and waited. 90 mins later later we had news. Remember that nice new steering gearbox that we had replaced on Big Dave 10 days ago? It had failed and was leaking. Now we had air in the power steering pump (hence the noise) which would likely need replacing too. It could all be fixed but not until Wednesday. Oh, and it was all going to be quite expensive. Those were the lows.
The highs:
1. It could all be fixed!
2. If we had to kill 5 days somewhere, we were in a relatively interesting place and we had a nice campsite.
3. We weren’t to be wheel-less. Our new best friend, Denise from MikesKars, gave us a courtesy car to use: an elderly Volvo 850 saloon in an indeterminate colour that we named Mike.
Mike on Tour
We left the garage having also arranged to have the 2 new tires and realignment done whilst we were at it. In for a penny, in for several thousand dollars. That’s what I say.
We drove back to the campsite with lighter hearts and beer. The next few days saw many strange looks from passers by who looked at the camper down on its legs, looked at Mike, the Volvo, back to the camper, wondering how…. The powers of Swedish engineering we told them.
It is safe to say that we did Gettysburg. We rebooked our bus tour. We visited the visitor centre. We watched the film. We viewed the Cyclorama. (This is very impressive and enormous 360 degree oil painting mounted on the inside of a large circular cupola above the visitor centre). We toured the museum in the visitor centre. We drove part of the self guided AutoTour around the battlefield sites, revisiting and stopping at some of the sites we passed on the bus tour. We visited another museum which had functioned as a field hospital during and after the battle. (The sawing off of legs and arms seemed to be high on the job-list of the civil war army surgeon.) It was quite the educational experience. I think I could be a useful member of a ‘Civil War Re-enactment Troupe’ now.
Very small section of Cyclorama
We also found a brew pub and even found a swimming pool to do some lengths, so it was not all work, work, work. The weather during our time in Gettysburg could be described at best as ‘damp’. Our camp was another riverside gem, but on our second to last day the river rose quite worryingly. We seemingly had no quick getaway options if it flooded. Luckily the owner of the campsite was the only person we have met in the entire 7 months of USA travel in Tin Can who has an equivalent sized camper, and more importantly, a truck like Big Dave. He was on stand-by, but happily was not needed.
Wednesday came. Big Dave was fixed and had his new tyres. (Of course he did need a new power steering pump.) We paid our bill, donated flowers and donuts to the MikesKars team, went back to camp, loaded Tin Can back up, drove 10 km to a truck tyre service centre to get the wheel alignment, got back to camp, got sorted and on Thursday morning we were finally on our way.
Hasta La Vista Gettysburg.
Side note:
I just remembered the other ‘low and high’, that at the time were overshadowed by the whole “Big-Dave-is-stuffed-and-now-is-fixed’ debacle.
Remember Teeny Dave?
Low: On the day of the screeching he was unfortunately subject of an incident involving a moving part of Tin Can that luckily only irreparably redesigned him, not the important moving part. He also was stuffed.
But whadoyaknow???? The camp site shop sold replacements. High, high high!!
Behold Itsy Bitsy Dave.
