I set out from home Sunday morning (June 18th, 2000) for Gettysburg. I had planned on renting a car, but let's just say that my credit card company and I weren't seeing eye to eye just right then. Instead of renting a car, I took my primer gray '79 Ford F-150, which I lovingly refer to as "Regan MacNeil" (Linda Blair's character in the Exorcist), because the old thing has got to be possessed by some kind of a demon. Dad calls it the all-new old truck, everything under the hood of that old truck is new. Nothing can go wrong with it 'cause I have fixed everything I reasoned. Besides I was on vacation and in need of an adventure. I remember second guessing myself that whole first day. Thinking to myself that I must be crazy for even thinking about going on this trip of 850 miles one way, in my old truck. I did a lot of thinking to myself and probably talking out loud to myself too, because my truck does not have a radio, nor does it have cruise control or air-conditioning. 159 miles into the first day I heard a new sound, over the roar of the wind through the windows. What was it, I could just barely make it out, was it a tapping? A vibration? First sign that parts were going to begin flying off that old thing? I pulled over and lifted the hood, at idle it sounded just fine and had been driving just fine. It occurred to me that I have never driven it over 60mph before, so I didn't know what it was supposed to sound like. I tried to convince myself that the odd sound was normal and that I should be comforted by it. It wasn't working very well, I got more and more paranoid with each passing mile.

I arrived that evening in a suburb of Dayton, OH, Huber Heights, 420 miles from home. Where I had booked, with my temporarily defunct credit card, a room at the Days Inn. They still had my reservation and were holding my room. They said, "I'll go ahead and charge this to your card." I said, "No, I'd rather pay with cash, actually Travelers Checks." They were fine with that. The room although small, had a refrigerator, microwave oven, coffee pot, hair dyer, ironing board and iron, and a 27" TV. It was very nice! I nearly had the place to myself. That evening I fueled up, had a repast at McDonald's and returned to the motel. Then I spent the evening channel surfing and watching the Weather Channel. The next morning, even though I hadn't slept well or long (I never do in a strange bed), with the previous days activities I felt good and was ready for the open road.

I got temporarily lost in Columbus, OH and nearly took a detour to Gettysburg through Cincinnati. I pulled over and got myself straighten out, although I did end up going through all the construction that I was trying to avoid. Once though Columbus I began to notice a change in the terrain. It wasn't flat any more, as it had been since I left Iowa. The terrain was getting hilly. I was expecting that but not so soon. As the miles rolled under me, the hills got bigger and the valleys deeper.

After leaving Ohio, I got surprise. I was in West Virginia (I'll leave out the images in my head that that knowledge gave me from the movie Deliverance). Wheeling, West Virginia. Here was a town that I had heard of, only I thought it was in Pennsylvania. I knew how I had heard of this town, from playing Railroad Tycoon on the computer. But there was something else about Wheeling, West Virginia... It was nagging at me, I couldn't put the pieces together, that is until I got home. It was in Wheeling in June and July of 1861 that leaders of the northwestern counties of Virginia held a convention and seceded from "Old" Virginia and rejoined the northern states. President Lincoln quickly accepted the government in Wheeling.

Finally into Pennsylvania. A quick stop for gas and lunch in Washington, PA. Imagine my surprise at the gas prices. I had paid $1.85 back in Iowa before leaving, $1.87 in Illinois and $1.91 in Huber Heights, but in Pennsylvania gas was only $1.55! Only he says, makes me wonder just what is going on with these gas prices.

Before leaving I had chosen the Pennsylvania Turnpike, since this would give me the most direct route. Turned out that it might have been a mistake. The Pennsylvania Turnpike was under heavy reconstruction. The lanes were narrow, the traffic was heavy and there was no shoulder to pull off onto in case something went wrong with my truck. Knowing my luck, this was the spot I was sure something bad was going to happen. The Allegheny Tunnel was very cool, a mile long underground 4 lane superhighway, quite an engineering feat. I would have thought that there would have been some kind of a road side exhibit to it's construction, there wasn't. I wouldn't have stopped anyway. For the next 35 miles it was almost all down hill. Fairly steep too. I hadn't thought that I was that high up in the mountains to have to go downhill for so far.

Finally I pulled off the Turnpike, paid my $3.70 toll for the privilege of driving through all that construction and turned onto US 30, also known to me as the Chamberburgs Pike. I was almost there. Only another 65 miles to Gettysburg.

The first 40 miles of the Chamberburgs Pike was without a straight piece of highway, it was either going up hill or down and always on a curve. It would have been a fun drive in a sportier vehicle than I was driving. That 40 miles took over an hour, then finally I entered the valley that contains Gettysburg. I was back into flat open farmland, it looked a lot like Iowa except there where mountains in the distance.

Then just after 6pm and nine and a half hours on the road that day I entered the park. I had made it to Gettysburg! After a quick phone home to let everyone there know that I had made it and that my old truck was running just fine, I began to think about the next two days experience. I was about to explore my first battlefield. I had read about the Battle of Gettysburg, but it was difficult to figure out who was where and why certain things were done. In the course of the next two days I was hoping that I would be setting all that straight in my thinking.

Jump Ahead July 1st, 1863 The Evening of July 1st, 1863 July 2nd, 1863 - Dawn July 2nd, 1863 - Sickles goes forward July 2nd, 1863 - Little Round Top The Devil's Den July 3nd, 1863 - Pickett's Charge Shopping in Gettysburg The National Cemetery Epilogue Bibliography and Acknowledgements