July 3= Day 7

Synopsis:  151.9 miles driven; 3.25 hours on the road; Westminster, MD to Chester, PA; Visited Gettysburg Battlefield, Amish country in PA

After a quick continental breakfast at our hotel, we drove about 30 minutes from Westminster, MD to Gettysburg. What a neat thing that we get to be here on July 3 - the 147th anniversary of the last day of the battle in 1863. We had bought our tickets on-line before going and so we could skip the line when the doors opened at 8:00 am and go right to the "Will Call" booth and pickup our tickets.

The battlefields and ranger programs are all free as part of the National Park Service but I highly recommend buying (that's right, spend money) to get the tickets to the film, cyclorama and museum. Every single one of them is worth the price of the ticket. The film gives you a great overview and understanding of the battle and what lead up to it. The cyclorama is amazing. Painted over 100 years ago on a 42 x 377 foot, it is an amazing depiction of the battle and the new presentation with audio and visual additions is fantastic.

The boys took part in the Junior Ranger program - at Gettysburg, a family can do one booklet and every kid in the family can get to be a Junior Ranger. Again, we worked on it as a family and learned a lot more than we would have otherwise. A special program for kids in the summer at Gettysburg, is that they can join the army. They only take about 30 kids and you have to sign-up in person. All three of our guys got in and went through some training to be in the Union army. They really enjoyed it.

Beside the army training, film ,cyclorama, and museum, we took the 1.5 miles trail and walked on the battlefield, visited the cemetery, saw the place President Lincoln gave the Gettysburg address, and attended a Ranger talk about the battle. Altogether, we spent about 5.5 hours at Gettysburg. From there, we took a drive through Lancaster county and stopped at an Amish restaurant (smorgasbord) for lunch/supper. We then drove out of our way by about 30 minutes to go through Delaware (another state for our list) before getting to our hotel for the evening.

Hotel Deal of the Day: One night at a Days Inn for $0 by using points accrued from hotels on our trip out West.