Visiting Gettysburg,
Pennsylvania Notes by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
Getting
to Virginia from Wisconsin required a lot of cross-country driving. Laurent and I took turns at the wheel.
I
drove in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio while Laurent drove through Chicago, part
of Ohio, and Breezewood (Pennsylvania).
The drive into Breezewood in the dark, up and down the mountains
resembled a roller coaster ride.
Pennsylvania was a very beautiful state that I was discovering for the
first time.
The
landscape around the freeway began to become mountainous east of
Cleveland. The grass was so green, it
reminded me of Ireland.
The
homes in Pennsylvania have very high, rectangular roofs with brick chimneys on
them at either end of the roof.
Rectangular porches made the homes seem even more symmetrical. They all had planters full of geraniums.
We
woke up to the fresh morning air in the mountains. We read in our hotel literature that
Gettysburg was just sixty miles away from Breezewood. We set out for the famous battlefield on the
U.S. Highway 30 for a jaunt through the mountains on a country road.
The
first thing we noticed on our way to Gettysburg (Pennsylvania) was the Runaway
Truck Ramps on the downside of the mountain grades. Those runaway truck ramps made us very
careful about control of our own car.
Along
the way, we admired how people in Pennsylvania tended to their gardens with
tulips and daffodils popping up everywhere.
Gardening is very much an East Coast and European pastime. I yearned to have my own garden one day, too.
When
we arrived at Gettysburg, we did the auto tour.
Most of the commemorative plaques that we read around the Gettysburg
Battlefield were conciliatory towards the South, saying that the Southern
soldiers were courageous.
There
is a huge monument with General E. Lee on top of it that commemorates
Virginia. In typical European fashion,
Laurent knew more about Gettysburg than I did.
Laurent
remarked that Gettysburg was important, because it broke the morale of the
South. Pickett’s Charge and the Cupp’s
Hill Engagements were key engagements in the Battle of Gettysburg.
By
Ruth Pennington Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
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