The kids slept in till 10am today! We started off by telling the kids we were flip-flopping the day so they could enjoy the KOA before we leave and do schoolwork this afternoon when the weather was expected to get wet. But when we got to the new campground, the weather forecast had changed and so we changed our plans too. Expecting rain tomorrow instead, we left right away to tour Gettysburg today (instead of tomorrow), and saved school for the rainy day.
We drove a half-hour into Gettysburg. (There were closer campgrounds, but they either didn't have 50amp service or they were already booked.)
Our first stop was lunch at the Dobbin House. Apparently we stumbled upon a real gem of a place with quite the history to it. We had lunch in the tavern and saw the Underground Railroad hiding spot for slaves featured by National Geographic magazine.
We enjoyed Gettysburg. We saw the battlefields from the 3-day battle in July, and the site where Lincoln spoke months later in November. We learned he had prepared "just a few words" to commemorate the cemetery where soldiers were moved to for proper burial. The sign they are posing by also says he revised his speech, so the English teacher in me imparted how even the best speakers and writers always are open to making their work better. Addisyn choose to write about Gettysburg for her social studies assignment this week (I helped her type and organize ideas):
Gettysburg -- By Addisyn Rand
Gettysburg was the place where Abraham Lincoln gave his speech that begins with “Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived by liberty and declared the proposition that all men were created equal.” He gave this speech on November 19, 1863.
Let me explain the first words of his speech: A score is 20 years, so 4 score is 80, plus 7, is 87 years ago. 87 years before 1863 was 1776 when the U.S. was born when the colonies declared independence from Britain. He made a point to talk about how all people are equal since the confederate and union states were fighting over slavery laws. It was only two-minutes because he was just trying to make a few remarks, not a whole speech. In it, he said that no one would ever remember it but it turned out to be a very famous speech. I think it’s amazing that so simple words can be so powerful in people’s minds.
His speech was about dedicating the land to the soldiers who gave their lives to give us free states. They wanted to give all the Union soldiers who died in the battle a proper burial in a cemetery.
When I was walking around the cemetery, I thought it was a weird that they had tombstones with just numbers on them rather than names, and then I found out that it was because they didn’t know who each one were because they are buried in battle ~3 months before and then they couldn’t identify their faces. I thought it was interesting that the bodies of soldiers were organized by what state they were from.
**MON 6/10 Rainy, stay in school day.
We hunkered down in the rain to get some school work done today, and then we escaped to open air as soon as the rain took a break. Addisyn made brownies in the oven today. Marissa bought a bug catcher from the camp store and had fun trying to catch bugs. We walked the park bridges, played basketball, and enjoyed the playground for today's PE before going back in to finish our busywork for the day.
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