Gettysburg

We spent a ridiculously hot day last weekend observing a reenactment of the battle of Gettysburg. We had been looking forward to this for weeks but we’d never been to a Civil War reenactment before and we weren’t really sure what to expect.

When we first arrived the battle was pretty far away from the spectators, so it was hard to see what was going on. We watched and baked in the sun for a while before we decided to go check out the “town.”

Conan wore both his and Lincoln’s hats for a while but it is nearly impossible to get a picture of him these days. He is always on the move.

What really amazed me about this experience is the number of people who have such a high level of passion for the Civil War. Not only are there thousands of men “fighting” on the battlefield in wool uniforms, there are people who come in period attire to sell their wares, play in bands, take care of horses, or just to watch. And  many of them stayed to do it again the next weekend. Amazing.

Lincoln loved trying on some hats in various tents. He really liked looking at the various wooden guns in many of the tents and kept asking to go back to look at them.

We enjoyed some refreshing period soda (complete with a cork!) from one of the tents.

We were able to get our picture taken with some Confederate soldiers who were hanging around. One of them called Lincoln Johnny and I said, “Hahaha, his name is… Lincoln… oh sorry.”

Before we left we decided to see what was going on with the battle and I’m so glad we did. Things had really heated up and the action was much closer to the spectators. There were cannons going off constantly and smoke everywhere.

We were able to grab a photo with a Union soldier who had recently been killed and was headed off the battlefield.

I asked Lincoln to take a picture of me and Jonathan with the battle in the background (which is a pretty common occurrence) and a nice lady came up and offered to take a picture of all of us. Conan had about had it by this time, but at least we have some documentation that we were all there. Go Union!