Gettysburg
Jun. 29th, 2019 07:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cornerofmadnessSo let's see if I can remember some details.
We left early in the morning so we'd have a good day's worth of sight seeing (me, my brother and his wife). We stayed in the 1863 Inn which is terrifyingly close to the Jennie Wade House. (as in nearly touching it). We check in early and head to lunch at the Dobbin House Taven. It's actually Revolutionary War era, 1776, the home of Rev. Dobbin and later a stop on the Underground Railroad.
My brother was right. I'd love to work in that tavern. Its in the basement, cold and dark, a place a vampire would love. I had an open faced reubin which was yummy. From there we walked to the diorama which was too expensive for the 15 minute history lesson (though the to-scale entire battle was well done). I did pick up a fired bullet from the battleground they had for sell (and made my fingers tingle).
From there we drove to Culp's hill but didn't get out anywhere (just took some photos from the car) because it was ridiculously hot out there. My brother and SiL are frequent visitors to Gettysburg so I let them lead. We also went to the military cemetery and walked around there for a while. It was relatively interesting (military cemeteries all look alike so they aren't too exciting as far as that goes).
We wandered back the hotel and jumped in the pool. For those who know me, know my vacations are very active. I'm not a lie about the pool type but it was SO hot so we swam around for an hour to cool our cores. We walked a million miles (so it felt, but it's really just a few blocks up hill both ways :) and hot so hot) to the roundabout for dinner. God knows why. I thought it was a favored restaurant but they had never been there. I did have a nice seafood wrap and some smithwick's.
We went to the Swenney Taven at the Farnsworth house for people watching (after swinging by Mr. G's for ice cream, chocolate covered strawberry for me) and a drink at the tavern, a swenney lemonade (raspberry vodka, strawberry puree, lemon) before heading up the the haunted orphanage for a ghost tour.
the haunted orphanage is fascinating. It was started by a woman after the battle. If the story is true and the guides aren't conflating things, then one Union soldier was found clutching a photo (something quite new then an ambrotype) of his three kids, presumably because he knew he was dying and wanted to see him. The townspeople were so touched they ran nation wide ads describing the picture and Philanda recognized it. She came to claim her husband and the doctor who paid for the ads befriended her. Together they started the orphanage. After a few years she remarried (and according to one guide left her children there) and Rosa Carmichael was given the job.
She was evil. After packing in 100 kids in a home designed for 20, she beat, starved, and tormented the kids (and used older orphan boys to do her dirty work) There was a pit (probably a root cellar) where she shackled children. One boy was found almost frozen to death by the next door graveyard caretaker locked in the outhouse Christmas eve. She barred all the teachers and preachers from the premise. She was so bad, she was actually tried and convicted. Ghosts of children (and perhaps Rosa herself) have been seen.
The tour took us around the orphanage, over to the cemetery and then inside the orphanage to the dining hall and the basement. I had no experiences but I enjoyed it. It was a nice way to end the day
We had previous bought tickets for the double decker 2 hour history tour bus on the first (10AM) bus. It was a great tour, worth the 32$. It took us through Culp HIll, all around every battle field (which were surprisingly shaggy and/or cultivated because I expected to be able to walk on them given past people's experiences). There are so many monuments. I'm not going to capture all the history here. It's horrible, the loss of life. 50,000+ casualties (dead, wounds and missing). So many stupid military choices made too so I'm shocked that only Jennie Wade was the only civilian death.
There were some stand out monuments, the eternal flame tower, the PA monument and honestly there was one by the same artist for Louisiana and another Confederate state were some of the most fabulous ones (I only got a crappy pic and we could NOT find it when we went back). We drove past Devil's Den and then we were allowed out at the top of Little Round Top. I have no doubts it had to be shoot fish in a barrel as far as picking off the Confederates. Wow. Terrifying. The monuments there were neat but so were the rocks.
The tour ended with the cemeteries and the knowledge of how to find Jennie Wade's grave. We hit Gettysburg Eddies for lunch (Eddie was a hometown baseball hero) and I lived dangerous with a philly cheesesteak (as so many of them end up all fat) it was perfect. Yum.
We got in the car and drove back out to Devil's Den, got out, walked around, decided that was where I probably would have hidden and prayed to be invisible in that battle (and my god HOW did they fight this in July in wool) and then we tried to find the monuments I wanted better pics of. BUT there are SO many roads, all one way and no map that we had (ah well) we never did find them but did stumble on the Irish Brigade monument, a Celtic cross with a sad Irish wolfhound prostrate at the base, so that was cool. I didn't want to buy the book but I might look for it in a library The Irish in Gettysburg Seems NYC sent tons of them, basically refugees right off the boat, You can to be a citizen, go fight in the war. And since the Irish were the unwanted immigrant of the day other New Yorkers were allowed to pay the Irish to go fight in their stead. We stopped at the Irish Brigade gift shop (SiL is Irish) and I picked up some coffee that had the green beans aged in Irish whiskey barrels so it smells and sort of tastes like Irish coffee minus the alcohol)
Since it was 93 degrees with a real feel of 100+ we took another dip in the pool before going O’Roarke’s for dinner. I had wanted to eat the Farnsworth House Inn since we were going on the ghost tour there and it's so historical. However comparing menus, O'Roarke's was much more diverse and interesting and across the street from the hotel. Brother got Guinness stew inspite of the heat but man was that GOOD.
So another MR. G's ice cream later (Salted caramel) we sat around the Farnsworth waiting. And our tour started late which annoyed me but not at much as the idiot who brought their 2 year old on the tour in a stroller. (might not even have been two). We strolled up to the Jennie Wade house, which really was Jennie's sister's house (Jennie's is just up from the Farnsworth actually). Jennie stayed in town with Georgia who had just given birth. She was baking bread for the Union soldiers and playing nursemaid to the wounded when an errant sniper round from the attic of the Farnsworth caught her in the back killing her. She was kept in the basement for days until being buried in the back yard only to be moved to the cemetery.
The guide also told the orphanage story but since we were running late (my SiL told me the next day it was because a couple wanted to hit the gift shop and it would be closed upon return and boy that pissed me off) we did NOT hit the cemetery (and this was the cemetery tour!!) so we went back (My brother and SiL went to the cemetery on their own since they did this before) to the Farnsworth. She asked us since the attic (which held multiple bodies of the sharpshooters, and there are bulletholes all over the this thing) is ridiculously hot would we rather the haunted (where they stored about 40 bodies) basement that's 58 degrees. Basement! There was a lot of stories here, mostly about the redhead red whiskered woman-hating confederate Walter, and a dead boy who was kicked by a horse as the most seen ghosts. Lorraine Warren had sealed one of the rooms (my photo of this DID NOT come out, most on that later) and there is a horrible mirror that is supposed to be a portal and in a frame from a murderer's house as I saw on Kindred Spirits was there.
What really pissed me off however was because we started late we had to rush out of the basement and end the tour. (Yes that WILL be in my tripadvisor review) so I didn't have time to kick off the flash so I could really photograph that mirror and somehow the one of Lorraine's seal which I SAW in my view finder ended up not even on the door at all. I did have a personal experience; the smell of decomposing flesh and sulfur from gun powder. It was overwhelming. I asked about it post-tour and she said that was common. Not a surprise. I liked the guide. I would have liked it better if we had started on time.
On the tour we learned fireworks would be going off a 11. My brother and SiL go to work early so they're used to going to bed early. I stayed out and watcher it. The tension and feel of panic all around town went sky high. Sounded like cannons. I'm like that will rile the ghosts, grabbed the camera but didn't get as close to the cemetery as I wanted (too many weirdos out, didn't feel safe that isolated alone) But the Jennie Wade house was lit up for a tour so I snuck around taking pictures thru the windows. Got some cool ones of the fireworks.
Let's call it the day of disappointment. We were supposed to leave at 10 AM so I could sneak over to a store I missed and maybe a museum but my brother decided leaving two hours earlier than that was more fun. eye roll but since those two have to go back to work on Monday I said nothing.
The trip home was fine but tonight after dinner I called my aunt to tell her I'll be back in the apartment so mom can still have the bed and my uncle goes 'oh but she's got these curtains she's working on all over. Let me check.'
Let me say my aunt has been changing. She's miserably unhappy (turn off the fucking political news, it'll help) and she has been getting nasty. She KNOWS I was going to be there a week when she offered me the place. I've still got my books and stuff on the night stand. She calls back and tells mom well you have a couch, she can sleep there. Mom said thanks for nothing. Yeah because I could have gone to my other aunt's but she has no internet.
I'm a little hurt but what I really am is PISSED. Mom is pissed. I'll send dad for my stuff. Fuck her. I'm not going down there. Actually Mom's doing so well post op she's like I don't need the back bedroom so you take it CoM but she shouldn't have had. (the downstairs couch is only a loveseat and all 5'8 1/2 of me won't fit and the upstairs couch well my parents get up early and I don't). So have fun being a bitch, aunt. I won't forget it.
I need to sort thru my boring pictures to find the best ones and guess what, 90+ degrees, three people and not ONE of us remembered that damn fan we bought. Brilliance!
We left early in the morning so we'd have a good day's worth of sight seeing (me, my brother and his wife). We stayed in the 1863 Inn which is terrifyingly close to the Jennie Wade House. (as in nearly touching it). We check in early and head to lunch at the Dobbin House Taven. It's actually Revolutionary War era, 1776, the home of Rev. Dobbin and later a stop on the Underground Railroad.
My brother was right. I'd love to work in that tavern. Its in the basement, cold and dark, a place a vampire would love. I had an open faced reubin which was yummy. From there we walked to the diorama which was too expensive for the 15 minute history lesson (though the to-scale entire battle was well done). I did pick up a fired bullet from the battleground they had for sell (and made my fingers tingle).
From there we drove to Culp's hill but didn't get out anywhere (just took some photos from the car) because it was ridiculously hot out there. My brother and SiL are frequent visitors to Gettysburg so I let them lead. We also went to the military cemetery and walked around there for a while. It was relatively interesting (military cemeteries all look alike so they aren't too exciting as far as that goes).
We wandered back the hotel and jumped in the pool. For those who know me, know my vacations are very active. I'm not a lie about the pool type but it was SO hot so we swam around for an hour to cool our cores. We walked a million miles (so it felt, but it's really just a few blocks up hill both ways :) and hot so hot) to the roundabout for dinner. God knows why. I thought it was a favored restaurant but they had never been there. I did have a nice seafood wrap and some smithwick's.
We went to the Swenney Taven at the Farnsworth house for people watching (after swinging by Mr. G's for ice cream, chocolate covered strawberry for me) and a drink at the tavern, a swenney lemonade (raspberry vodka, strawberry puree, lemon) before heading up the the haunted orphanage for a ghost tour.
the haunted orphanage is fascinating. It was started by a woman after the battle. If the story is true and the guides aren't conflating things, then one Union soldier was found clutching a photo (something quite new then an ambrotype) of his three kids, presumably because he knew he was dying and wanted to see him. The townspeople were so touched they ran nation wide ads describing the picture and Philanda recognized it. She came to claim her husband and the doctor who paid for the ads befriended her. Together they started the orphanage. After a few years she remarried (and according to one guide left her children there) and Rosa Carmichael was given the job.
She was evil. After packing in 100 kids in a home designed for 20, she beat, starved, and tormented the kids (and used older orphan boys to do her dirty work) There was a pit (probably a root cellar) where she shackled children. One boy was found almost frozen to death by the next door graveyard caretaker locked in the outhouse Christmas eve. She barred all the teachers and preachers from the premise. She was so bad, she was actually tried and convicted. Ghosts of children (and perhaps Rosa herself) have been seen.
The tour took us around the orphanage, over to the cemetery and then inside the orphanage to the dining hall and the basement. I had no experiences but I enjoyed it. It was a nice way to end the day
We had previous bought tickets for the double decker 2 hour history tour bus on the first (10AM) bus. It was a great tour, worth the 32$. It took us through Culp HIll, all around every battle field (which were surprisingly shaggy and/or cultivated because I expected to be able to walk on them given past people's experiences). There are so many monuments. I'm not going to capture all the history here. It's horrible, the loss of life. 50,000+ casualties (dead, wounds and missing). So many stupid military choices made too so I'm shocked that only Jennie Wade was the only civilian death.
There were some stand out monuments, the eternal flame tower, the PA monument and honestly there was one by the same artist for Louisiana and another Confederate state were some of the most fabulous ones (I only got a crappy pic and we could NOT find it when we went back). We drove past Devil's Den and then we were allowed out at the top of Little Round Top. I have no doubts it had to be shoot fish in a barrel as far as picking off the Confederates. Wow. Terrifying. The monuments there were neat but so were the rocks.
The tour ended with the cemeteries and the knowledge of how to find Jennie Wade's grave. We hit Gettysburg Eddies for lunch (Eddie was a hometown baseball hero) and I lived dangerous with a philly cheesesteak (as so many of them end up all fat) it was perfect. Yum.
We got in the car and drove back out to Devil's Den, got out, walked around, decided that was where I probably would have hidden and prayed to be invisible in that battle (and my god HOW did they fight this in July in wool) and then we tried to find the monuments I wanted better pics of. BUT there are SO many roads, all one way and no map that we had (ah well) we never did find them but did stumble on the Irish Brigade monument, a Celtic cross with a sad Irish wolfhound prostrate at the base, so that was cool. I didn't want to buy the book but I might look for it in a library The Irish in Gettysburg Seems NYC sent tons of them, basically refugees right off the boat, You can to be a citizen, go fight in the war. And since the Irish were the unwanted immigrant of the day other New Yorkers were allowed to pay the Irish to go fight in their stead. We stopped at the Irish Brigade gift shop (SiL is Irish) and I picked up some coffee that had the green beans aged in Irish whiskey barrels so it smells and sort of tastes like Irish coffee minus the alcohol)
Since it was 93 degrees with a real feel of 100+ we took another dip in the pool before going O’Roarke’s for dinner. I had wanted to eat the Farnsworth House Inn since we were going on the ghost tour there and it's so historical. However comparing menus, O'Roarke's was much more diverse and interesting and across the street from the hotel. Brother got Guinness stew inspite of the heat but man was that GOOD.
So another MR. G's ice cream later (Salted caramel) we sat around the Farnsworth waiting. And our tour started late which annoyed me but not at much as the idiot who brought their 2 year old on the tour in a stroller. (might not even have been two). We strolled up to the Jennie Wade house, which really was Jennie's sister's house (Jennie's is just up from the Farnsworth actually). Jennie stayed in town with Georgia who had just given birth. She was baking bread for the Union soldiers and playing nursemaid to the wounded when an errant sniper round from the attic of the Farnsworth caught her in the back killing her. She was kept in the basement for days until being buried in the back yard only to be moved to the cemetery.
The guide also told the orphanage story but since we were running late (my SiL told me the next day it was because a couple wanted to hit the gift shop and it would be closed upon return and boy that pissed me off) we did NOT hit the cemetery (and this was the cemetery tour!!) so we went back (My brother and SiL went to the cemetery on their own since they did this before) to the Farnsworth. She asked us since the attic (which held multiple bodies of the sharpshooters, and there are bulletholes all over the this thing) is ridiculously hot would we rather the haunted (where they stored about 40 bodies) basement that's 58 degrees. Basement! There was a lot of stories here, mostly about the redhead red whiskered woman-hating confederate Walter, and a dead boy who was kicked by a horse as the most seen ghosts. Lorraine Warren had sealed one of the rooms (my photo of this DID NOT come out, most on that later) and there is a horrible mirror that is supposed to be a portal and in a frame from a murderer's house as I saw on Kindred Spirits was there.
What really pissed me off however was because we started late we had to rush out of the basement and end the tour. (Yes that WILL be in my tripadvisor review) so I didn't have time to kick off the flash so I could really photograph that mirror and somehow the one of Lorraine's seal which I SAW in my view finder ended up not even on the door at all. I did have a personal experience; the smell of decomposing flesh and sulfur from gun powder. It was overwhelming. I asked about it post-tour and she said that was common. Not a surprise. I liked the guide. I would have liked it better if we had started on time.
On the tour we learned fireworks would be going off a 11. My brother and SiL go to work early so they're used to going to bed early. I stayed out and watcher it. The tension and feel of panic all around town went sky high. Sounded like cannons. I'm like that will rile the ghosts, grabbed the camera but didn't get as close to the cemetery as I wanted (too many weirdos out, didn't feel safe that isolated alone) But the Jennie Wade house was lit up for a tour so I snuck around taking pictures thru the windows. Got some cool ones of the fireworks.
Let's call it the day of disappointment. We were supposed to leave at 10 AM so I could sneak over to a store I missed and maybe a museum but my brother decided leaving two hours earlier than that was more fun. eye roll but since those two have to go back to work on Monday I said nothing.
The trip home was fine but tonight after dinner I called my aunt to tell her I'll be back in the apartment so mom can still have the bed and my uncle goes 'oh but she's got these curtains she's working on all over. Let me check.'
Let me say my aunt has been changing. She's miserably unhappy (turn off the fucking political news, it'll help) and she has been getting nasty. She KNOWS I was going to be there a week when she offered me the place. I've still got my books and stuff on the night stand. She calls back and tells mom well you have a couch, she can sleep there. Mom said thanks for nothing. Yeah because I could have gone to my other aunt's but she has no internet.
I'm a little hurt but what I really am is PISSED. Mom is pissed. I'll send dad for my stuff. Fuck her. I'm not going down there. Actually Mom's doing so well post op she's like I don't need the back bedroom so you take it CoM but she shouldn't have had. (the downstairs couch is only a loveseat and all 5'8 1/2 of me won't fit and the upstairs couch well my parents get up early and I don't). So have fun being a bitch, aunt. I won't forget it.
I need to sort thru my boring pictures to find the best ones and guess what, 90+ degrees, three people and not ONE of us remembered that damn fan we bought. Brilliance!
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no subject
Date: 2019-06-30 12:49 pm (UTC)I didn't know all that about the orphanage, geeze, how awful.
I'm glad you managed to have some fun despite the heat.
Your aunt sounds like a piece of work.
no subject
Date: 2019-06-30 01:31 pm (UTC)"I'm like that will rile the ghosts"
I like the way you think!
no subject
Date: 2019-06-30 02:37 pm (UTC)It would have been the perfect time to be IN the cemetery (but it's not allowed at that time of night but nothing stopped me from standing on the sidewalk and shooting in)
no subject
Date: 2019-06-30 02:41 pm (UTC)The orphanage is just tragic. I'd recommend the ghostly images ghost tour through there (only 10 bucks at this point for an hour and a half)
Thanks. It was fun heat aside.
Oh no kidding. I'm just like whatever aunt. I mean if her son is coming, no big deal, just SAY SO and I'd have arranged to go with the other aunt