Gettysburg

Last Saturday we went to Gettysburg. It's just a little over an hour from our house. It was a gorgeous and rather windy fall day. Basically it's hard to imagine Gettysburg looking better.

We skipped the 45 minute film and museum (toddler in tow) and spent all of our time driving and walking around the battlefield. Gettysburg, a turning point in the Civil War, was a three-day battle and involved lots of troop movement over an impressively large area.

We climbed this observation tower to get a view of the battleground.

It was extremely windy up top.

The surrounding farmland.

My favorite part of our trip was the little hike we did up Big Round Top, not because it had much significance to the battle, but because it was so pretty.

Our last stop of the day was Little Round Top, which unlike it's larger sister, was an extremely important location in the battle. The strategic hill was seized by the Union Troops on the second day of the battle (July 2, 1863). The view below is of the Valley of Death. The rock formations in the valley, known as Devil's Den, helped conceal Confederate snipers who kept the Union troops atop the hill under constant fire. In the open areas of the field many soldiers died in their attempt to take the hill.

A rare picture of all three of us on Little Round Top.

This final picture was taken in the cemetery, which is full of canons and monuments to the various companies.

Jill Tours Mount Vernon

My friend Jill came to visit from Arizona. You can read more about our friendship here, here, here, here, and probably some other places too.

It was great to have Jill come and stay. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't so great while she was here. One day we went to Mount Vernon. Jill's job was to learn stuff and teach me later and my job was to corral Beckett. It was a pretty efficient system.

A view of the Washington's stately abode.

Stuff Jill taught me: The walls inside the house (no pictures allowed) are painted vivid shades of green and yellow because bright colors were in fashion at the time. The Washingtons had a lot of guests stay in their house. Some they knew and some they didn't. There were no inns to speak of around so travelers frequently dropped in. Martha Washington was known for serving at ham at evening evening meal. We also saw George and Martha Washington's bedroom, where George Washington died at the age of 63. It is quite a large and comfortable looking room. After her husband's death, Martha slept in a bedroom in the attic. It was a common custom to sleep in another room during mourning, Martha, however, never returned to her bedroom. She died in the attic room three years after her husband's death.

The back of the house looks out on the Potomac.

We looked in some of the surrounding buildings were slaves and servants worked. Here's Jill looking at the various modes of transportation available.

Beckett had a couple major high points during the trip.

One was seeing this bus. The kid loves buses. He learned to say "city bus" that very day and repeated it about 137 times on the drive.

Beckett also loved the carts that the workers drove around. He called them "tractors" and tried to board this one.

The Education Center at Mount Vernon has a really fun kids room where Beckett played with a model of Mount Vernon (he knocked on all the doors, told George Washington "night, night," and drove Arthur up the stairs and on the roof). Beckett also liked the map of Mount Vernon that is inlaid in the floor of the exit. He got down on the ground and started reading all the letters, much to the amusement of all the bystanders.

Here is the tomb where George and Martha Washington were originally buried.

They now have a much more stately resting place (and the new location was chosen by George Washington before his death).

 

It had been raining off and on all day, but we had a nice long dryish spell while we looked at the house and some of the grounds. Then while we were at the tomb it started really raining. We had a pretty long walk to get back to the museum. Even with umbrellas we were more than a little wet by the time we arrived.

Rain and all, it was well worth the trip (even with the heinous D.C. traffic we had to face on the way home). Jill stayed for a couple more days. The weather was even worse the next day (thus no pictures), but we caught a short break while in the old section of Baltimore (Fell's Point) and had a few minutes to walk around and see some of the shops and old buildings.

Jill, come back soon for some more touring.

Stickies

When my mom was in Kansas helping us pack up our house Beckett had his first encounter with stickers. He loved them.

He put all these stickers on himself on top of one another on his tummy.

Lately he keeps requesting stickers with apple on them. They are really small and not particularly exciting, but he loves them. He puts them on his socks. He needs at least two, one for each foot. I call them apple toes.

Yesterday Beckett had some apple toes, and he started to get really upset when Nate went to put on his shoes and kept saying "apples, apples." He didn't want his apple stickers covered by his shoes so he moved them from his toes to his knees.

Hiya Bus

Beckett's love of trains is well documented on this little blog. He was lucky enough to live in a place where we saw a real train almost everyday. We had to cross the railroad tracks to get most places, and I never cared if we were stopped by a train because Beckett enjoyed it so much. However, since moving out east we have not seen a single real train (granted we've only been here for a week and a half). What we have seen are a lot of buses. This area is obviously very into busing. We don't just see one bus a day, we see about seven. We can see a bus or two pull into our cul-de-sac every school day.

We are hearing lots of "hiya bus," "another bus," "look a bus," and "bye-bye bus." (Beckett's sitting next to me saying "hiya bus" as I finish this post.) I'm glad we have something to fill the train void, at least a little.

From KS to MD

On our last Sunday in Kansas we took some pictures of Beckett because he was looking especially handsome. The following Thursday we loaded up the car and said a sad farewell. We will miss Kansas and all the good friends we met there. On our way out of town we stopped for breakfast at Fritz's so that B could enjoy the food-delivered-by-train one last time.

We took a detour to Chattanooga on our way east to see my cousin Wendy and her family. It's been a really long since the two of us got to hang out, but when we were kids I used to spend as much time at her house as possible during our trips to Utah. It was great to see her crew.

 On our way into town we stopped at the Chattanooga Choo-Choo. Beckett was thrilled to be out of the car and visiting a train.

The next morning we went with Wendy and her family to Chattanooga's river walk. The kids played on these animal statues.

 Beckett loved the river walk because of all the bridges crossing the Tennessee River. He thinks bridges are really awesome.

Consequently, he was absolutely thrilled that we got to walk across one of the bridges spanning the Tennessee. He ran at top speed across its entire length.

The reward for crossing the bridge was delicious ice cream. Kate talked about the awesome ice cream all the way across the river.

The kids all took turns sitting on the horses in the ice cream shop. Beckett thought this horse was a little scary.

After Wendy and her crew left to go home, Nate and Beckett and I went to the Hunter Museum of American Art, located right on the banks of the Tennessee.

Then we took Beckett back across the bridge (bye-bye bridge, bye-bye bridge) and let him play in the spray ground before we got back into the car and drove to Virginia.

On Sunday we spent some time in the Shenandoah. The views were lovely, and our stop at the picnic ground was really fun.

Someone was thrilled to be out of the car.

On our way into town, we made one last stop at the D.C. Temple.

All in all we drove for about 22 hours. We went through Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and Maryland. We spent the night in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia. Luckily, Beckett is an amazingly good road tripper.

Hanging Out with Dad

When Beckett hangs out with Dad he gets to do all sorts of fun things...

like line up all the cars on the floor of the CVS

and swim in the wheelbarrow.

Serious fun.