As we got up in the morning, Dad got an AirBnB message from our host with information about checkout. This perplexed Dad since we did not plan to leave until the next afternoon. He logged into his account and discovered that sure enough, he had booked it for just one night. That made me laugh, a lot. While Dad started to pack up, I found another place for that night after we returned from Gettysburg.

After breakfast we headed out for our two hour drive to the other main attraction of the trip, Gettysburg National Battlefield. For our soundtrack we had an audio battlefield tour, a preview of what we would soon get to see. Dad, of course, had already listened to it but he eagerly lapped it up again. I settled in for the ride, cross-stitching and admiring the views along the way. I kept seeing signs for Valley Forge, the Valley Forge. I mused out loud to Dad, wondering why we couldn’t go there too. Dad expressed regret while I quickly searched up the directions on Google. Turns out, the side trip would add only 20 minutes to the drive so we went, of course.

Once we arrived, we pulled into the park and headed straight for the office. While the office underwhelmed due to its temporary nature (they have a new one under construction) I did not mind. We visited the office just to grab souvenirs and a map. When we left we walked over to a big map at the entrance and started to plan a walking tour to the main points that we wanted to see like George Washington’s headquarters. Then I started calculating how long it might take to do all that by walking.

We still had a little hour to drive to get to Gettysburg and didn’t want to shortchange that at all. That made the choice simple. Even though we prefer walking, we would just drive to the two main sites of interest this time.

I got positively giddy when we pulled up at the row of barracks.

Once parked, we headed first towards a reconstructed earthworks next to the reproduced barracks. These earthworks came complete with a cannon.

Of course, Dad requested a picture next to the cannon. If I had a dollar for every picture I have of Dad with a cannon … . After prying Dad away from the cannon (I kid), we walked down the row of barracks.

Obviously, since Valley Forge was designed as a temporary winter camp, the soldiers did not build the structures to last longer than the winter. Thus, considerable work in historiography went into the reconstruction of this one row. Each of the buildings showcased a different aspect of life in Valley Forge during that terrible winter, telling the complete story as well as they could.

From there, we drove down to the other thing we wanted to see, George Washington’s headquarters.

This building, since it had been a private home prior to the Revolutionary War has been preserved throughout the years. Unfortunately, for an unknown reason, we could not enter the house itself. We hypothesized that perhaps people did not tour the inside. However, after peering in one of the ground level window and seeing curated displays figured that we must have just come at a time when we couldn’t enter.

We could wander around the grounds for a bit which we certainly took advantage of.

I could not stop smiling as we strolled back to the car and got back on the road to Gettysburg. Seeing history in person always gives me a thrill. A little over an hour later we pulled in the entrance, accompanied by a sudden, unexpected downpour. Instead of making us upset, the rainstorm made us laugh. As we got out of the car, Dad loudly proclaimed that rain would not keep him away from the battlefield.

Just in case we got carried away touring the battlefield, we dashed into the gift shop first getting only mildly damp in the process. One dangerous place to put two history nerds, one an ardent devotee of everything related to the American Civil War, is the massive, quite extensive gift shop at Gettysburg National Battlefield. I found my usual keychain souvenir as well as a souvenir for one of my former students who I had promised to bring back a souvenir from Europe. (Yes, obviously Gettysburg is not in Europe. However, the particular souvenir he requested did not exist.) When Dad found a t-shirt he liked, I told him I would get it as a birthday present. He picked it out but then saw the absolutely perfect one, a play on the Beatles iconic Abbey Road photo with Gettysburg generals in their place. Obviously that meant that I had to get that one for him and one with hipster Abe Lincoln, glasses and all with the phrase “That’s so four score and seven years ago” for me. Obviously, we also had to change into them immediately after purchasing it.

Dad had also bought an overpriced umbrella to aid in our site seeing escapades. However, I discovered after changing my t-shirt that the sudden rain shower had ended as suddenly as it had started. Dad took the umbrella back for a full refund and we got started on our driving tour.

Although I would still love to take a tour of this and other battlefields on a bike or even completely on foot, having an air-conditioned car to get us from point to point helped tremendously. Summers on the east coast do not feel pleasant.

I wish I could remember even a handful of the stops that we made along the way. On the next trips I take, whenever I get to take them, I will take much better notes and try to write the travelogue a lot sooner than half a year later.

Dad, of course, knew far more about the significance of certain locations on the battlefield than I did. He has a penchant for military history that I don’t quite share, at least not that intensely.

I still found myself utterly captivated by all the monuments we passed as we drove along.

Each state that existed at the time of the Civil War has a monument, Pennsylvania’s occupying the largest and most grand position. We climbed to the top of that one and could survey almost the entire battlefield expanse.

I found myself particularly fascinated with the plaques inlaid on the top of the wall which contained directional arrows pointing out the location of every prominent location on the battlefield.

After we descended I had to take a picture of Dad, his request, standing at the top of the monument steps in Rocky pose. Wrong city Dad. We were there that morning.

Other landmarks included statues dedicated to prominent military figures. Dad eagerly searched for one of his favorite, Longstreet. He even saluted the general. See, I have photographic proof.

I particularly liked the ones at Little and Big Round Top. These statues, poised on the edge of rocks overlooking the magnificent valley below gave off an air of melancholy remembrance, perhaps even a wisp of longing that the battle be over.

I also could not get enough of the breathtaking view, something far different than what these men gazed on.

We finished our battlefield tour with a stop at the cemetery, the place from which Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg address, the speech most people know him for.

We walked onto the grounds of the cemetery, stopping first at the marker indicating the spot on which Lincoln stood while he delivered that address. I stood in that spot for a minute or so, taking in the context of that history, partly reveling in the fact that I stood where Lincoln once stood and partly weighed down with the heavy weight of the toll inflicted by a war that would go on to take the lives of thousands more.

As we headed back to Philadelphia, neither Dad nor I could wipe the smiles off our faces. We talked so much on the return drive, going over the monumental history we had just had the opportunity to immerse ourself in.

I had found a new AirBnB for us for the night. As we approached the new place, we both had to laugh because we traversed many of the same streets as the day before making many of the same smooth maneuvers on the skinny one-way streets. Finally, we arrived in the unique skinny three-story flat. Each story had a single room with a kitchen in the basement, living room on the ground level, a bedroom and bathroom on the third floor. I chose that room for myself.

We settled in, ordered pizza from a local restaurant which I walked over to pick up to save on the delivery fee, and relaxed after making a plan for our mourning tour in the city, the last thing we would do before heading back to the airport marking the end to my summer 2019 travel adventures.