From Beautiful Downtown ...

Gettysburg. I packed.

Well, we're not exactly in downtown Gettysburg. Our hotel is a little odd, well off the beaten track but quite large and clean and up to date and ... empty. There are two buildings, and ours is the only car in the lot for our building; the other lot has a few. We are in room 1. This is the Eisenhower Convention Center, and I guess there are no conventions this week. The restaurant, which was recommended to us, does not appear to be open. Oh well, it's Sunday. Maybe the place comes alive during the business week (one can only hope.)

(Oh, no conventions, as such, but lots of bikers here and there, and a lot of places in town and on the outskirts have signs saying "Welcome Bikers!" Don't know what that's about yet.)

It took us about four hours to get here, which is what I expected based on a map search yesterday, and not a bad drive. It looked like it was going to pour from time to time, but there wasn't a drop. After we got here and settled in, we took a ride around to get our bearings. We're actually not far from the entrance to the battlefield/national park, but the visitor's center was closing just as we got there. We need to be back there by 8 tomorrow morning when it opens. So tomorrow looks like a battlefield tour, with a ranger, if we can reserve that, or otherwise we'll rent the audio tour and do it ourselves. Tomorrow or the next day, we'll go take the tour of the Eisenhower Farm, which is only by bus (as in, you can't drive your private car there), but that leaves from the same battlefield visitor's center.

The town itself looks very charming. It has lots of cute looking shops and its share of tacky gift shops. I need to find postcards for boxx! I'm considering asking the Hubs -- who is in remarkably good humor, but I expected him to be -- to get a picture taken in Civil War garb. I don't want one of me, just him in uniform. Now if only he hadn't shaved his beard, he could have done justice to a Robert E. Lee, but this current mustache just won't do. Anyone with just mustaches back then had a big sweeping one, not a neatly trimmed looks-like-his-Italian-grandfather one. We'll see how it goes.

No pictures to post yet, but I expect to have some tomorrow. I tried to take one from the car, but everything went by too fast. I wanted to show you how pretty New Jersey is once you get away from the oil tanks on the Turnpike and the suburban congestion where I live. Yes, folks, I passed lovely rolling hills and valleys, with little towns and farms nestled into the valleys. I saw actual silos and cows and everything, right here in New Jersey. I'll see if I can get a picture on the way home.

Okay, I finally got the air conditioner to work in the room and now I am freezing, but it's right next to the not-so-high-speed ethernet connection, so this is where I have to sit to type. I'm going to log off and see what's on the TV.


WATCHING NOTHING :: ENTRY #1524