Gettysburg National Park and Cemetery

Was dragged here by my mother, the civil war enthusiast. All I knew going in was the battle happened and Lincoln made a short, memorable speech about it. Turns out that it’s an interesting place, especially if you get a personal tour guide.

This was the first largescale battlefield that I had the opportunity to visit. It was just a fluke that my wife and I decided to go since it was on the way to a friends wedding in Maryland. Until you really step onto the battlefield and see the enormity of it, you just can’t appreciate it. To stand in the exact place where soldiers lay dead over 140 years ago…Well, its very sobering. It makes one think.

The tour guide was very knowledgable and had lots of stories and insights that made the visit more personal and less academic. Definitely do the tour!

Whether or not it was the turning point of the Civil War, which is very debatable, it’s America’s most prominent and well-preserved battlefield of any war, and it’s just an amazing place. Not just the battlefield and cemetery, but the town as well.

If you go, plan on spending 2-3 days…there’s just too much to accurately do in one day. Take a ranger-guided Battlewalk if you have the time as well. It’s well worth 2-3 hours to walk where the soldiers walked and get accurate information about a certain part of the battlefield.

Awesome! It felt like the soldiers from the past were still present.