Sunday, October 4

We had enjoyed the state of New York, but today we crossed Pennsylvania from the northeast to southwest Gettsyburg. Rolling beautiful hills and villages dot the sides of the road. The northern part of the state had the same blazing color found in New York and Vermont. I realize that if the color is great in the south, leaves have fallen in the north. If color is beautiful in the Adirondacks, it is still green in Maryland.

We haven't said much about food. We had found some wonderful inexpensive food until today. Around 12:30 we were cruising down Hwy 81 when we decided to look for a dinnerhouse with the most cars. This has always been an effective strategy. Unfortunately we drove about 7 miles to this small town, picked the diner with the most cars. Casual dress. Down home kind of place with specials like chicken pot pie. Chuck ordered the roast beef dinner, and I ordered a meatloaf sandwich which came with “filling.” Filling was defined as potatoes mixed with onions, celery, etc. What we received was enough food for 5 people. I had this huge plate covered with dark brown stuff. Gravy. Except it didn't taste like gravy. More like brown wallpaper paste. So I lifted the top piece of white bread and ate the meatloaf which was pretty good. The filling wasn't bad either. Fortunately Chuck had shared his salad with me. He put away half of his dry roast beef. Anyway, we left trying to forget the experience. I swallowed a Pepsid about an half hour later.

We arrived at Gettsyburg at about 3:30 and checked into a motel. Then we walked through a forest to get to the Visitor Center. The Gettysburg foundation has built a new center which charges for almost all the exhibits. It is big, glitzy, and has many workers keeping the massive new wood floor shiny. Our motel manager said the new charges ($3 more just this year) paid a number of executives. Our compromise was to take the car tour around the battlefield. We enjoyed the drive. How could such beauty be defiled by such carnage. Although I had been here 10 years ago, I had forgotten how massive the battle was. A beautiful end to our day. The only negative was that I lost my camera case in the moving in and out of the car process. It contained several cards, a flash drive, and my mechanism for transferring pictures to my computer. Drat.