No Clam Chowder

My friend Darryl and I had talked about the possibility of going to Gettysburg for a while, but we could never put it together.  He was eager to see Gettysburg.  I wanted to see it, but I probably wasn't quite as eager.  I was kind of hoping to do it and combine it with some other stuff.  I had thought of road trip possibilities that would have included Gettysburg with stops at Cooperstown or Ohio baseball stadiums.  Well, I crossed those off without getting to Gettysburg (or at least I tried to in the case of Cincinnati).  So I came up with a new idea, an entire Civil War road trip.  Gettysburg, Antietam, and Harpers Ferry are all fairly close to each other.  Also, I had been trying to figure out an excuse to go to West Virginia.  I thought about minor league baseball in West Virginia.  They have three minor league teams, but they're all in the southern or western parts of the state, making them really long drives from Long Island.  But Harpers Ferry was close enough to cross West Virginia off my list.  So we got our friend Bobby in on the trip and we took a three day trip to some historical sites.

While we were planning the trip, I was talking about my goal to get to all fifty states.  Bobby and Darryl asked what I considered being in a state.  I have a pretty low threshold.  If you're in a state for any reason other than an airport layover, I count it.  I do like to do more than drive through a state, which is why I found something to do in Kansas for just a few minutes instead of just driving through it.  I explained how my only trip to New Hampshire was the day of my friend John's wedding.  The wedding was in northeast Massachusetts, not too far from the New Hampshire border.  So I did some research on Yelp to find a place in New Hampshire near the border to get some good clam chowder.  I spent about 30 minutes to an hour in New Hampshire.  Just some driving and eating clam chowder.  It's been crossed off the list.  My mistake was that I should have just kept going to Maine.  Maybe I'll get to Portland, Maine for some minor league baseball eventually.  But anyway, the joke became that my standard for being in a state was having clam chowder.

So we set out early on a Wednesday morning two weeks ago on our way to Gettysburg.  There was a ridiculous rain storm the night before.  There were flooded roads and I was worried about getting off Long Island.  It turned out to not be too bad.  We had fantastic weather when we got to Gettysburg.  Our first stop was the museum.  It's a very good museum.  You really could spend several hours there.  The first thing we saw was a film about the battle and the Gettysburg Address.  You're not going to believe this, but it was narrated by Morgan Freeman.  Then we walked around the museum for a little bit.  I enjoyed the stuff on the Gettysburg Address.  I knew that Lincoln was not the keynote speaker and that he thought his speech wasn't very good.  (Edward Everett was the keynote speaker.  He spoke for two hours, but he was very impressed with Lincoln's speech.)  I didn't realize the varied reactions at the time.  Apparently the audience was pretty impressed, but the reaction from newspapers was very mixed.  But there was lots more to see.  On our way out of the museum, we saw a statue of Abraham Lincoln.  We all took our turns taking our pictures with Lincoln and then we were off for the battlefield tour.

I wore my Notre Dame stars and stripes shirt in honor of Father Corby.  I'll get to him.

They have buses that give tours or you can do your own tour.  We bought a CD that we listened to as we drove the battlefield.  Our CD tour guide was Wayne Motts, who was really really enthusiastic about the Battle of Gettysburg.  The other highlight of the CD was that at several points they give you warnings like, "Make sure you don't hit any pedestrians as you head to the next stop," or "Make sure any children with you don't run and jump wildly on the rock formation or they slip and seriously injure themselves."  Maybe I'm exaggerating a little, but there were many places on the battlefield that could be dangerous.  Two in particular come to mind.  Little Round Top overlooks the battlefield.  It's pretty high up and there's no railing or anything to keep you from falling off.  The other one is Devil's Den.  Actually, I don't think the CD had a warning for Devil's Den.  It's a rock formation that isn't all that high, but there's definitely the potential for injury.  You can climb up and some of the rocks have spaces between them.  Falling in between could be very problematic.

A view from Little Round Top

Devil's Den

We finished Wednesday by going to dinner at a place recommended by the girl who sold us tickets for the museum.  On the way, we stopped to see the statue of Father Corby.  Father Corby gave general absolution to the Irish Brigade of the Union Army on July 2, 1863.  Besides that being awesome, I'm a fan of Father Corby because he was the president of Notre Dame from 1866-1872 and 1877-1881.  There's a replica of the Father Corby statue at Notre Dame.  The plaque by that statue at Notre Dame says that the only statues in Gettysburg that are of people other than generals are Abraham Lincoln, Father Corby, and a civilian.  There are so many statues and monuments and memorials at Gettysburg that I'm not entirely sure that's true, but quickly browsing through this website does seem to support that claim.

Father Corby

By the way, another statue we saw was of Abner Doubleday.  He was a Major General in the Union Army.  The plaque on his statue mentions his connection to baseball, but explains that there is no evidence to support the claim that he invented the game.

There's a field in Cooperstown named after him, but he didn't invent baseball.

On Thursday, we finished our battlefield tour.  I really can adequately describe the battlefield.  It's huge.  And you think about all the people that died there to save our country and I can't put it into words.  If you like America, going to Gettysburg is something I strongly recommend doing.

After that, we went to the cemetery.  There's a monument to Lincoln there.  Nearby is the Soldiers National Monument, which is approximately where he gave the Gettysburg Address (he was on a stage that no longer exists).  By the way, if you haven't seen this version of the Gettysburg Address, it's pretty awesome.

The Lincoln Address Memorial

The Soldiers National Monument stands approximately where the stage for the Gettysburg Address was.

The last thing we saw before heading to Antietam was the David Wills house.  That's the house where Lincoln stayed and finished his speech the night before delivering the speech.  It's pretty amazing to be in the place where our greatest president once was.

Abraham Lincoln slept in that bed.

From there, we headed to Antietam.  We got there right as the visitors' center closed.  Fortunately, a park ranger gave us a map of the battlefield tour.  Unfortunately, we didn't have Wayne Motts.  The map also included descriptions of all the stops, so we knew what we were looking at, but we didn't have Wayne.  The battlefield isn't nearly as big as Gettysburg (the tour was about eight miles, Gettysburg's tour was about 24).  I can't adequately describe the battlefield, but you should know that the Battle of Antietam in September 1862 was the bloodiest single-day battle in American history.  There's not nearly as much to see as there is in Gettysburg, but it's close enough that you should make the trip if you go to Gettysburg.

On Friday, we got up early to go to mass.  It was the Solemnity of the Assumption, a holy day of obligation.  So we went to an early mass at St. Joseph's in Hagerstown, Maryland.  After that, we were on our way to Harpers Ferry.  Now, I know Harpers Ferry for John Brown's raid in 1859.  What I didn't know was that it was also the site of a Civil War battle.  The Confederates won the battle that ended just two days before the Battle of Antietam.  We took a little tour that was led by a park ranger.  There isn't a whole lot that you see.  You hike through the woods and then come to this big field surrounding a farmhouse.  They had different tours, but the one we got was really good.  The title was Civil War to Civil Rights.  So we walked around and made several stops.  At each stop, the park ranger talked about the history of Harpers Ferry.  This guy knew his stuff.  People asked him questions and as long as they weren't asking about the berries on one of the trees (that happened), he knew the answer.  He gave lots of really good answers.  One of the answers that stood out was when he explained why they built a federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry.  Bobby, Darryl, and I all said later that if we had to guess, we would have said the rivers (the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers come together there), but that wouldn't have been right at all.  Actually, one of the reasons is the opposite.  The rivers aren't navigable there.  In the early history of our nation, we didn't want the British or French to be able to get there easily and destroy our weapons if we ever fought with them.  Also, there was a certain type of tree that grew there that supplied wood for the guns and the mountains contained iron ore (or some kind of ore) for the guns.  And the last reason is that Charles Washington lived nearby.  President Washington wanted to increase his brother's property values by building a federal arsenal in the area.  Washington didn't tell Congress that last reason.

A view of one of the rivers in Harpers Ferry

So that was our trip.  Unfortunately, there was no clam chowder, so maybe I can't count West Virginia.  Our drive home wasn't fun, but we finally did it.  I used to have the fun fact that I had been to every state that borders West Virginia, but not West Virginia.  Now I have a couple other fun facts.  With my trip to Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, you could now go from coast to coast by going through states that I've been to.  But there's a catch.  You'd have to go to the Four Corners region and step from Colorado to Arizona since I haven't been to New Mexico or Utah yet.  Also, every state that I've been to borders at least one other state that I've been to with the exception of Washington, but that's been true for a while.  Here's the updated map of states that I've been to.  I still have 18 states that account for 98 electoral votes to get to.  What's next?  Hopefully I'll get to Minnesota next year for baseball (and that could definitely become like my Missouri baseball trip where I cross some other states off the list).  Maine and Vermont are the closest states I haven't been to.  I have to find reasons to cross them off the list soon.  And South Carolina is the only other east coast state I haven't been to.  Notre Dame plays at Clemson in basketball this season.  If it's a Saturday and I could get cheap flights, I'd consider making a trip for that.  I'm hoping to finish off the Major League Baseball stadiums next year (excluding the dumps that the A's and Rays play in), but the 18 states I have left are going to take some time.