In Part I, we had just spent the better part of two hours seeing the sights of Gettysburg.  By Day II, however, we had come to our senses and hired a personal tour guide to take us around for several hours and REALLY show us Gettysburg up close and personal.  (Mainly because I dislike the general public and their annoying children.)

Our guide was Tom Winfrey (uh, no relation to Oprah, I asked).  He was a retired chiropractor and had been giving tours for about seven years.  He knew everything there was to know about the epic battle between the North and the South.

He was like Rainman.  My dad started peppering him with questions right off the bat.

Oh, the things you learn when you actually pay attention.  Here are some of the highlights:  Only one civilian was killed during the three-day bloodbath.  It was a woman baking bread who was hit by a rogue bullet.  Eight buildings still have cannon balls lodged in them protruding from the brick.  There were 2,400 residents in Gettysburg at the time of the war and 21,000 wounded.  You do the math.  There are dudes who dress up like civil war soliders and stand around sweating to death in their wool uniforms.  If you take their picture, expect to pay them handsomely — or they’ll drip on you.  The park grounds are immaculately preserved for generations to appreciate.  I can’t say the same for the KFC located just four feet from the entrance.

Tom talked and drove around for three hours straight.  Toward the end, my head started to hurt because it was filled with so much useless historical data.  Every building had a story.  Every blade of grass had a tale to tell.  If I didn’t know any better, I could have sworn Tom was making stuff up just to appease us.  Didn’t matter, my dad ate it up with a spoon.  Several times the hair on the back of my neck stood up when we were traipsing around.  It was about that same time that Tom mentioned something about spirits that still roam around the battlefield.  Good timing, eh?

We finished off the day with an obligatory trip to President Eisenhower’s’ nearby farmstead.  Ike and wife Mamie donated the grounds to the Park Service when they died and their house and farm have been forever etched in time.  It was like stepping back in to 1955.  Mamie liked the color pink.  It was as if the house was coated in Pepto Bismol.  Ike owned the first color TVs in existence, not to mention, one of the first TV remote controls.  The décor was like an episode of “I Love Lucy” come to life.  Once again, my dad beamed during the tour.

We polished off a late lunch at a cute little French bistro in the middle of town, and then it was off to visit New Holland, PA … a cute little ‘burb smack in the middle of Lancaster country.  Mercifully, there’s not much to do there.  Thank God, after two days of Gettysburg, I was ready for a much slower pace.  And in Amish-land, you can’t get much slower than that.