Gettysburg PA

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Old friends are the best of travelling companions. I'm sure that familiarization is the key. There's a sync which makes traveling easy; Just like Sunday morning :)
We left for Raleigh, NC from North Central MA on Thanksgiving Day. We theorized that most people would be off the highway and having Thanksgiving dinner at home. Traffic would be light which would allow us to arrive in near record time.
Our theory was proven wrong. The Jersey Turnpike proved to be a slow moving parking lot for almost two hours. But we flowed; easy...
We left home at 8:30 a.m. and arrived for check    in about 10:45 at night. Just in time to share some
 beer and wings with some of the locals.
We were in Raleigh for a wedding. It was scheduled for late Saturday afternoon so we set Friday aside for exploring and getting a lay of the land. Mid afternoon we went to visit the groom and soon found ourselves roped into a dinner party for all of the out of town guests. We were secretly hoping to avoid the dinner as we had already set our hearts on the MacGregor Draft House.

We bad.

But the night went well and the party continued back to the hotel. Well, you know how such things go. The morning was rough. But we ventured downtown and explored the mix of things both new and old. It was great to see 400 yr old oaks and two hundred plus year old buildings dispersed throughout the new.



Sunday morning we veered north towards PA. I've always wanted to see Gettysburg. The battlefield is (was) enormous. The downtown tourist trap was fine with a beer and Reuben ending the evening at Eddie's.

When we awoke after a fine breakfast (We ate a lot) we traveled over to the visitors center which we enjoyed immensely. A couple of old coots eating, drinking, puffing and plain old goofing off.
And we deserve it.

But isn't it weird?

The sound, the smell, the emotion of fear, hate, loyalty, terror, grit and determination burned like the sun on this spot.... and here we are eating and drinking and standing in a surreal denial. The mind of the inexperienced cannot taste the throat catching, kick in the balls, of a real fight for your life.

Sacred ground?

Nonsense?

A drop in the bucket of time lost forever in the depth of time and ripple?





Comments

SHUBHAJIT said…
Small and nice travelogue. Traveling with old friends is fun I guess when we've become old.
1:35 AM
tao1776 said…
"Old"????? LOL
4:46 PM
baroness radon said…
I just had a little pilgrimage of my own and revisited some artifacts of my great-great grandfather, a Civil War veteran.

Speaking of old, I'm am contemplating that today, having received my Medicare card, and the word verification asked for here actually includes my numerical age, which I don't need to focus excessively on. Fortunately I can still see it. (although it didn;t work...now it has my son's name in it.)
7:15 PM
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