A few vacation links

I'm back from my little vacation and I just thought I'd blog a few interesting vacation-related links. During our little sojourn in Gettysburg, Megan and I ventured into the Schriver House Museum. It turned out to be one of the most interesting places we visited. We took a guided tour of the house, which was there during the battle, and heard the story of those first three days in July of 1863 from the perspective of the Schriver family. This is one of several places in Gettysburg that's trying to preserve and promote an understanding of the civilian perspective of the battle. If you're ever in Gettysburg, do check it out. It's very much worth your time, and the tour guide was one of those amazingly knowledgable volunteers that Gettysburg is so full of. You can pretty much throw a rock in that town and hit someone who has an incredibly impressive grasp of Civil War history.

But this trip was not just Civil War history. We also visited the Gettysburg farm that was owned by President Eisenhower; it's now a national historic site. The farm was where Ike went to escape and recharge during his presidency, it's where he also received many foreign dignitaries. Of course it's also where he and Maime lived during their retirement. (Think of it as his equivalent of W's ranch in Crawford or Reagan's ranch in California.) The Eisenhowers deeded their farm to the National Park Service after their deaths, and you can take a guided tour of the farm and the house. It was totally fascinating. The house is preserved just like they left it -- filled with their possessions and decor. It's like walking into the 1950s. I loved it. If you're ever in Gettysburg, do take the time to visit if you've got the time. The tour departs from the main Battlefield Visitor's Center. The only stipulation Ike and Maime made when they signed the farm over to the Park Service was that they didn't want it to be paved over for parking and whatnot after their deaths. They requested that people be brought to visit via bus or train, so that's how it is done to this day. The guy driving the shuttle bus was himself an amateur Ike historian, and he regaled us with little-known facts during the trip back and forth. His stories alone were worth the $7.