Anniversary Trip

Well, we are home after 4 days of travel, eating, shows and tourism. We were in and around the Lancaster, PA area, and there is WAY TOO MUCH traffic for me. Yankees not only are aggressive, they are rude and in many cases apparently stupid. Waitresses in restaurants were mostly barely there. One I had special issues with. One was so pleasant I wonder if she's a southern transplant. Drivers are awful. Of course, one has to remember how close that region is to Jersey and "da City" as they say. Enough about that.

I had a couple of bad days to begin the trip, so much so that Giann was afraid to stay. She begged me to bring her home on Monday, but I convinced her we would see how things were going before deciding. I began to feel better on Monday, and today woke up feeling very good, but still no energy. Just not sure why I have no energy. Well, except I AM reaching for 60. Today, or this afternoon, more specifically, I ache all over and it feels like I have a very low grade fever. I was not able to get enough fluids in me this weekend. I was constantly looking for drinks. Mostly iced drinks like smoothies and Icees. My favorite one was a strawberry smoothie from a little ice cream shop on Baltimore street in Gettysburg. I enjoyed that one. That drink is duplicated almost perfectly at Sonic. I've had it there before.

Been drinking OJ today. I love OJ.

Just thought you might want to see a few picks from the trip:

These devices are rifles. I do not know what their official designations are, but they have rifling in their barrels. The were used by the Confederate troops to shoot at the Union troops all the way down to the Chambersburg Pike, which must be a couple of miles away.









This picture was taken from Seminary Ridge.



A fence to divide. Divide what from what? To keep in, or to keep out? I realize it's current use as a boundary for the Park Service for tourism, and maybe it is only a prop. No historical significance or authenticity at all. But the monuments are real. And the names of men, boys, companies and armies are as real as we are. In fact, many of those names belong to us who gaze upon them now, 145 years and a month later. I am always viscerally grabbed when I visit a monument of war. Because while more died here at Gettysburg than I can comprehend, Gettysburg is but a single battle ground among hundreds of thousands around the war, in hundreds of international, national and civil conflicts. Does the killing end? Can it end?



Yep, going out straight up means you might be coming back straight down. Is that someones lunch I see floating up there just above the left rail???
















Some wood, some tubular, some old, some new, some abandoned, some in daily use, all meant to scare your outer garments off.