April 14, Gettysburg

We slept in and missed the complimentary breakfast. That's okay though, I have never seen hard boiled eggs with whites that are separated into layers anyway. Instead of having yogurt and nasty eggs, we had a late brunch at Marks Duck House and had dim sum. Mmmmm, dim sum! Love it! Emma told my mom that if we were going to eat anymore Asian meals, she would walk home to Utah. (Is it possible to be a curmudgeon at age 11?) The irony of it all is that when she is eating the food, she absolutely loves it. Rachel and Emma were pretty adamant about no more Asian meals but I think they need to look around them: Mom, Grandma, and Uncle are Chinese; Dad served mission and got a degree in Japanese; ummm, I think we're going to be eating Asian food pretty regularly!

After eating, we headed down to Gettysburg. Unlike the day before with our timing issues, luck was on our side. When we got to Gettysburg, we headed to the visitors' center. It wasn't there when Brad and I went seventeen years ago when we were dating (has it really been that long?) In fact, I was noticing that they were in the process of landscaping. We went inside and spoke to the ranger. Well, lucky us, we were there on the day of the grand opening. In fact, I think we might have been the first Utahns to visit. Pretty cool, huh? Although I have to admit that it seemed a bit anachronistic to see a Confederate soldier leaning against the visitor center sign talking on his cell phone! What was he saying? "Hello? General Lee? This is Sargent Anderson. About that charge up Seminary Ridge? That's not going to work for me."

The visitors' center was beautiful and the museum was a lot of fun. The only thing that bugged us about it was the $4.00 basket of freshly made potato chips. Should have brought a bag of Lay's Salt and Vinegar chips!

We bought a driving tour CD at the gift shop and proceeded to the Battleground. I was driving and Brad was helping me navigate and man the CD player. After a bit of a rough start, we were on our way.

Here are some photos of the tour: The first two is on Little Round Top; the second is at The Angle; and the final one is at Pickett's Charge.

There's actually a really interesting story about this statue of the Zouves. If you're interested, here's the link.
http://www.drawthesword.goellnitz.org/2007/11/11/72nd-pennsylvania-infantry/&h=600&w=800&sz=26&hl=en&start=1&um=1&tbnid=fqYKGoxFXQ2k9M:&tbnh=107&tbnw=143&prev=/images%3Fq%3D72nd%2BPennsylvania%2BInfantry%2Bstatue%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN

After driving around for a couple of hours, we were ready for dinner. We were under a little bit of a time constraint because we need to return the rental car. On another recommendation from one of Mom's friends, we called, you guessed it, a Chinese restaurant named China Jade and the food was ready for us when we got there. Once again, the girls made a lot of noise when they found out where we were going to eat but ate all the food. (That is except the cold jellyfish plate.) The food was really authentic. We got back to the hotel, unloaded the car and Brad and Ed took it back to the airport (See post of April 23). They finally made it back to the hotel at 12:30.