Day twenty-three, day off in gettysburg, pa

Mark and Tracey headed off early today toward State College to catch up with Kim Batty and stay a few days with Kim and her daughter. We had a day off to explore Gettysburg, which started off with coffee at “The Ragged Edge” in the Main Street.

We then headed down Taneytown Road to the Battlefield area from the civil war, initially parked and had a walk around some exhibits but then got back on the bike and pretty much did the one way auto tour, with Marie taking photos off the back off the bike and stopping here and there.

The battlefield park has been really well done, just about every platoon/regiment that was present on the July 1 to 3 , 1863 battle has had a monument erected, both Confederate and Union, so the entire area of a couple hundred acres is literally covered with monuments. There are strategically placed sign boards to advise what happened where but the free app you can download for the auto tour also has good detail about what occurred in each part of town. Interesting to read about the amount of work involved after the Confederate army retreated and the Union army went in pursuit, leaving 11,000 dead on the battle field and more than that wounded, all for the townsfolk and about 50 surgeons to sort, bury etc etc. No antibiotics in those days , amputations were prevalent and not done under anaesthetic. mass graves were shallow as folks would later come and recover their kin to take home to re- bury. Pretty tragic the numbers involved, the highest death toll ever obviously in any war the US have been involved in. Pretty sobering even for a tourist from across the ditch I must say.

Moving right along, Temps were great ,staying in the mid twenties. Horse and Janelle and Red and Corina headed up the road a piece to ride up a hill somewhere and explore a bit more of Pennsylvania.

A day not having. A big ride can be a good one……just saying.