#232 Near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania PINE GROVE FURNACE STATE PARK GARDNERS PA

Our next stop was pine grove furnace near Gettysburg. We left and about three o'clock which would seem to be more than enough time to get there before dark. The way in was rather strange in that it was all over hill and dale and around the corner at about 35 miles an hour. We could have come in some other way but there was no other practical way to get there. These places are way off the beaten path and I like that but it's still hard to get there sometimes in the big rig. Whenever we got to the place that says you have arrived it was just a boundary to the state park. Because the route was so slow now it will be dark soon. Dark is the very worse way to arrive at a campground of any kind. It wasn’t crystal clear on what to do next. Looking back, I wish I had entered the coordinates rather than the address. I saw something that said camping ground this way I turned right and pulled into the parking lot and it was the campground store. The person was still working and they were nice enough to answer my question that yes, we were on the right road. I went forward for maybe a mile or something like that and I saw a sign on the right that said " all campers stop here. " Sadly for us, I took on the rather arrogant opinion that I have read 100 bulletin boards I know what they say and what to do. When I saw the word camping at all I wish I had at least pulled over as that would have prevented a lot of grief. Looking back I realize they were saying turn in here do not go up this hill. I chose not to stop and read because I don’t care I'm going to go on to the campground. You can’t tell what to do. I kept on driving and driving and the road started being a pretty steep grade up a mountain. It went on for several miles and I just kept going and going and then I passed a really big parking lot that said something about it was an area for snowmobile parking. I did see an RV over there for the night and I thought to myself that is an excellent boondock. I could have just turned it in but that would have made too much sense. I went on slowly by a little bit and then noticed that the GPS then said that we were 18 miles away or something. When we left the campground store, I thought it was only a mile or so. Now I think you just need to turn around. There is no option to do this. I had to back up this almost one-lane road backwards about 3 or 400 yards and that was of course kind of tricky. There were cars coming and I was blocking the road. One of them came by and I asked him if I had him if I had passed the campground. He said yes it was back there about where the kiosk was. I realized I had been there and tried to figure out why I didn’t just read the sign. With some level of difficulty and with cars coming and I was making them all mad I managed to back up this gigantic rig up a steep hill. I backed it up to the parking lot I had just ignored. I turned around went back the right way. I pulled over and read the sign this time. I walk around to see the lay of the land. I wanted to see what I was getting into. I saw a vacant site it was ideal the site was fairly near and easy to back into and the water was very close. A common water spigot was about 60 feet behind the RV which is kind of like having a real hook up. Now things are looking up and I go back to the truck and someone is talking to India. It turns out it was the campground host.

She told me to go past this entrance and take a left into the exit and it will take me into the campground loop. This would be the easiest way to get done because now it is dark. It was hard but by I guess 7 pm we were done.

We got settled and everything is fine this place has electricity. We were able to use our baseboard heat as it was pretty cold like in the thirties. The next day around noon we went to Gettysburg and went to the big museum visit center it was pretty nice. I've noticed that most of the people in the South are jazzed up about how the South should have won the war and they're so proud of their war heroes from the Confederacy. Although I've grown up hearing all this I've never felt any of that. If you're reading this and you’re Pro Confederate you're not going to like this. The Confederacy was wrong they wanted to continue slavery and didn't want anybody to tell them what to do.

They wanted to destroy the US by forming separate countries. There's nothing there to be proud of my opinion.

But still, I find that going to cemeteries and or museums is useful because if you don't look at your history you may repeat it. I don't go with the fervor of the typical southern person.

I go into a state of mourning for such a pathetic state we were in as a country. When I left that morning, I wasn't sure who won or lost but it was clear the North that won this battle. That's mainly because they were able to hold the high ground and the South had to retreat. The North had more men to lose so these losses hurt the south more numbers-wise. To call it a win is a bit of a stretch because of how heavy the casualties were.

This is the fact sheet

The two armies suffered between 46,000 and 51,000 casualties, nearly one-third of all total troops engaged, 28% of the Army of the Potomac, and 37% of the Army of Northern Virginia.[81] Union casualties were 23,055 (3,155 killed, 14,531 wounded, 5,369 captured or missing),[8] while Confederate casualties are more difficult to estimate. Many authors have referred to as many as 28,000 Confederate casualties,[82] and Busey and Martin's more recent 2005 work, Regimental Strengths and Losses at Gettysburg, documents 23,231 (4,708 killed, 12,693 wounded, 5,830 captured or missing).[9] Nearly a third of Lee's general officers were killed, wounded, or captured.[83] The casualties for both sides during the entire campaign were 57,225.[84]

The thing to remember is that when they say wounded it might as well mean they're dead because it is very difficult to survive being wounded when we don't even have antibiotics and at this point. We are only barely beginning to understand the germs exist.

We went on and listen to the movie and enjoyed it. It was near rated by Morgan Freeman and he can do no wrong in my eyes.

After that, we went into an area like a cul-de-sac area exhibiting a diorama. I have never heard of such a thing. It was a very large 360-degree painting with the foreground being real dirt and wagons and bushes. It is an extremely large mural 44 feet high and 370 feet in a total 360. Again, I just assumed it was painted 5 years ago. I also assumed it was CG. It had backlit effects and a music program and it was an impressive show. They wanted you to feel like you were sitting in the middle of it. They achieved that effect pretty well. They made it seem like you were at Disney or something. Then they said we were looking at a hand-painted canvas that was 130 years old painted by a guy all those years ago. This was the original canvas and the original painting. This is going to get interesting. I thought it was a modern thing and it turns out I'm looking at original art. After the Civil War and before right up to motion pictures this was the state-of-the-art coolest thing that you can go see as an attraction anywhere in the country. It was extremely popular and it made a lot of money. I took a couple of pictures of the ads where they were trying to promote when it first played in Boston. That was pretty much our day trip and then we went by and had a bite to eat at Perkins and I bought new headlights for the truck because my low beam is out on the driver’s side.

I wanted to do some downloads from Amazon and Netflix so we went to a Starbucks. It cold, rainy, and yucky and so we hung out here to pick up the Wi-Fi from the parking lot and I did my downloads. We just kind of hung out and after that we went back to the house which was about half an hour away. Earlier in the day before on the way to Gettysburg we went by the furnace and I took some pictures. Its really exciting to be near these old furnaces where the industrial age started.

CAMPGROUND: PINE GROVE FURNACE STATE PARK

1100 PINE GROVE ROAD

GARDNERS PA 17324