Day 4 - Around Town

We started off the day by doing nothing and sleeping in!  The "to do" list for today had very little on it including visiting some sutlers and wandering around  the town of Gettysburg. We were out of the hotel after 10 and we visited several shoppes and a couple historic sites.  We visited the Museum of Gettysburg (highlighted on American Pickers), the Shriver House and the home next door - the Pierce House.  The Pierce home was significant to us because Colonel Colville of the first Minnesota recovered there for several months after being wounded at Gettysburg. The Pierce home is a private residence, but the Shriver house has been restored to an 1860 appearance and provides the civilian side of the Gettysburg story.  The story was presented by a tour guide, who did alright - she had obviously told the story many times and it was a little too rehearsed. 

Lunch was ice cream!  We visited a couple more shoppes and Luke and I visited the Gettysburg Diorama, which is a tourist trap in the back of a souvenir shop (first photo).  The presentation provided a good insight into the battle.  The large diorama needed to be cleaned and have some minor restorations and updating done, but it was a helpful visual to see how things were laid out and came together. 

We had dinner at the Appalachian Brewing Company and wandered back on to the battlefield for the sunset.  Tomorrow we're headed to Harpers Ferry for the last day of touring before we start the drive back to Minnesota.

I know this will be hard to believe, but after having two cokes with dinner Luke had plenty of energy and this is a shot of him goofing around on the battlefield - in this case he got left behind because he couldn't get off of the cannon before the car left.  Don't worry - he caught up when we stopped later on!