Terry did a lot of pre-packing the motorhome Wednesday night, so yesterday morning it was a simple job to run in our bedroom and living room slides, pull up our HWH leveling jacks, unhook our utilities, and get ready to hit the road.
We pulled out of the Hershey Thousand Trails campground, drove west several miles on U.S. Highway 322, then got onto Interstate 83 for a short distance before we left that for U.S. Highway 15, a nice four lane road that took us south to Gettysburg.
We arrived at Round Top Campground about 11:30, and the helpful staff quickly led us to our full hookup RV site and made sure we had everything we needed. It was an easy driving day of exactly 62 miles from our site at the Thousand Trails to our site at Round Top Campground.
Our site here is a level back-in with 50 amp electric, and life is good. It’s been about three weeks since our mail has caught up to us, and there was a big box waiting for us when we checked in. Once we were settled into our site, we sorted through it, then made a run to the bank to make a deposit, and stopped for an early dinner before we returned to our motorhome at Round Top Campground. We spent the evening filling the orders that came in with the mail, and watching the season premiers of The Big Bang Theory and Gray’s Anatomy.
Round Top Campground seems to have a lot of seasonal sites, as well as RV sites available; at nightly or weekly rates. It’s just far enough away from town to be quiet, but still only about five minutes to the Visitor Center at Gettysburg National Military Park.
Gettysburg is, of course, the town where the pivotal Civil War battle took place in 1863. The entire town is a historical site, and over 1,300 monuments, markers, and memorials commemorate the intense fighting that took place here. 
Everywhere you look, there is a statue, a plaque, or a cannon. It seems like every unit that took part in the battle has its own memorial or statue. 
And of course, the generals who led those units are also honored with statues, like this one of Union General Meade. 
We toured Gettysburg and did a feature story on it, as well as one on President Eisenhower’s farm, a few years ago. But the new expanded National Parks Visitor Center has opened since then, so we want to check it out, and maybe hit a couple of other places we missed when we were here before.
We’ll only be here a couple of days, because we have reservations at Cherry Hill Park in College Park, Maryland for next week, while we tour Washington, D.C. It’s about the most expensive RV park we’ve ever stayed in, but we can buy tickets for the metro in the park office, and a city bus comes through and takes you right to the station. On our last trip to Washington, we found that the convenience is well worth the extra cost.
Meanwhile, Bad Nick is at it again, with a new Bad Nick Blog post titled Being A Woman Shouldn’t Matter. Check it out and leave a comment.
Thought For The Day – I thought about being born again, but my mother refused.
Nick Russell
World-Famous, New York Times Best Selling Author, and All-Around Nice Guy!
Nick,
If you are interested in a good old fashioned bar/restaurant one of my favorites is a few miles south of you in Emmitsburg, MD. It is called the Ott House and it is on the square in the center of town. The bar is covered with Fire Dept patches since it is a favorite of those who attend the National Fire Academy on the outskirts of town. They have two memorials to Fire Fighters on the grounds of the Fire Academy.
Emmitsburg has a lot of history also. The Mother Seton Shrine is there along with a very nice grotto. Mount Saint Marys College is near the grotto.
We have a mountain cabin west of Gettysburg just south of Caledonia State Park which we use in the summer as a break from full timing in our RV. Beautiful country out this way.
Clearly you havn’t stayed at Disneyland’s Fort Wilderness, which is the most expensive park we’ve ever visited. The next time you are coming to DC, try Greenbelt Park, part of the National Park System near Greenbelt, MD. You’re too young, but we can stay there half price, with our old folks pass. There is a metro station near the park. If you want a nautical interlude, visit the town docks in Annapolis. It is a charming town, with colonial style state government buildings.
Whatever you tour, enjoy!
We visited Gettysburg a couple of years ago and I know what you mean about the statues and monuments. When we were there a bus load of military men and women arrived at the Peace Memorial. Our guide told us the military academies send future officers to study the battlefield and always end their visit at the Peace Memorial. Good to know.
How about a future story on the artistians and craftsmen who built all those memorials and statues?
Gettysburg is a GREAT place to get your geocache fix.
O’Rourke’s Tavern on the main drag in Gettysburg is a great place for an evening meal. One evening I saw reinactors (?) from the North, South and WWII. Also John Wilkes Booth who in real life runs the old time photographers across the street and down a ways.
JC
Nick,
Bill and I stayed at Artillery Ridge Campground, a Passport America campground and did the horseback ride through the battlefield. The horses are stabled at the campground They also have a minature diorama that is free to the RVers staying there. You can do the horseback ride even if you aren’t staying there. They gave you headphones with the story and where you go in the battlefield you can not tour by any other mode.
So, I guess the National Park Service would kind of frown if I dug out my handy-dandy metal detector, and started wandering around the battlefields!
Adding this campground to our list of future stops. I’m a bit of a Civil War buff so Gettysburg is already on our list of places to visit.
when i was little my grandparents and relativies we came to gettysburg long time ago and took picture i look back on them and even can’t believe that i was sceared of the wax statues and now just been thinking of the history of them.