It's tour date.
I did a lot of
research and talked to a number of friends who have been to Gettysburg &
knew we wanted a tour guide. We did the Road to Hana with a DVD / GPS tour
& it was OK. But I knew we would have questions & wanted to make sure
we had the best experience possible.
Option #1 the guided
licensed battlefield tour guide. $30 a person & get on a bus with dozens of
other people. You know how that works some goofball asks dumb questions
& occupies the guide.
Gettysburg has a
great option #2. Same licensed battlefield tour guide $65 total cost, he drives
your car & is your "private tour guide" you don't share him with
anybody!
Hmmmmm. $30 x 5 =
$150 vs. $65. No brainer. Only problem is we have the Fit, where we barely
"fit" into, so we rented a mini van for the day. Still worth it! I
even opted for the extra hour and got the 3 hour tour for $95.
Our tour guide was
Les. He's from Texas and moved here to be a Registered Guide. He studied for 4
or 5 years and applied along with 25 other people to be a guide. Only 6 passed.
He was really a great guy. He immediately started asking us what we we knew
about the Battle & the Civil War in general. Asked where we were from and
if we had any special interests in the Battle.
We told him we had
watched the history Channel Gettysburg documentary last night & the boys mentioned the fighting in the "railroad cut" on Day 1' led by Col.
Rufus Dawes. I mentioned Joshua Chamberlain & the 20th Maine. Les took it
from there....
We all hopped in the van with Les driving. He started off
with a overview of the War and how & why it got to Pennsylvania. He showed
us bullet & cannon ball holes in buildings in the city. We headed out to
where the South approached the city & the Battle began.
What was neat about Les is he geared the tour towards us, he
pointed out where the Illinois units fought,
He made it a point to show us the railroad cut and talked about that. He
talked to the boys and asked them questions, getting them involved. He even
remembers when the boys said they were born in North Carolina and stopped at a
couple of their memorials.
We got out of the
car & walked around sites a lot, getting a first hand view of the Battle.
We walked around Little Round Top, the site of the fighting by the 20th Maine.
Part of my interest in the 20th Maine is because my boss is a big fan. The more
I read about them & their commander, the more I want to know.
The view of the battle field from there was awesome.
The light brown dots
across the road is the Devils Den, where the boys climbed around last night.
Devil's Den was a group of large rocks, and named for a family of snakes that
used to live there.
We worked our way to
the sites of Pickett's Charge and were able to understand the size of the
battle.
Les wound up going
20 minutes over. Not once did we feel rushed, quite the opposite it was the
best tour guide situation I have ever experienced.
