Twisting and Winding

Undoubtedly the best 500 km stretch of motorcycling happened on Saturday morning.  The less then trusty KTM 990 fired right up like it was ready to get in a fight.  The air was cool and crisp, no clouds and sunny skies.  It was my obligation to get us to Gettysburg.  The direct way was 420 km of interstate, versus about 500 km of county roads.  We opted for the latter, and had the GPS unit set to our points along the way.

From Portageville, NY we crossed into Pennsylvania within an easy hour of driving.  In Pennsylvania we took a zig-zagged route through sleepy communities called Galeton, Wharton, Phillipsburg, Huntington, Fort Loudon, and over to Gettysburg.  I can assure you this was some of the finest riding my 70K bike has ever taken.  The roads were not busy, the weather was great, the views were amazing, and they were twisting and winding continuously.  The bike was working and starting just fine, and we took these roads that go south and east, south and east.  It was another long day, but much better then yesterday.  By 3:00 we rounded into Gettysburg.

About 3 miles outside of Gettysburg the feel changes.  First there becomes a huge increase in traffic.  You arrive to these huge vast fields with knee high grass with fencing.  Signs start to pop up with directions to the National Cemetery, National Park, Visitor's Centre, and so on.  All of the sudden there are more tourist buses.  When you drive into town there is a lot of foot traffic on the sidewalk with people walking into and out of the stores.  There are placard signs every 100 ft with text and pictures mentioning a historical significance of one kind or another.  It is a long downtown stretch and our hotel was toward the opposite end of how we arrived.  It was appropriately named the 1863 Gettysburg Inn.

The shoppes and consumables were heavily geared towards civil war paraphernalia.  There must have been 10 shops selling t-shirts, magnets, ash trays, coffee cups, coffee table books, DVDs and every other 2019 kind of trinket.  But the other half of the shops catered to selling things from the 1860s; pistols, swords, lots of period clothing and cookware, different coins and stamps, antiques and things of that nature.  There were also a lot of candy and confectionery outlets to buy stuff from.  There were a few stores that also have dusk ghost-walking tours through the cemetery and battlefield areas.  With 52,000 people killed during 3 days, and over 5,000 horses killed as well, undoubtedly there must be some spirits to be roused up.  But the point is it was very busy, and there was a lot to see and look at.  The downtown even had a bit of a round-about that reminded me of the square in Goderich.

Darin and I stayed right in this downtown core and thus we walked up and down the main street a few times.  It started to rain ever so slightly on us, but we brushed it off of our shoulders and kept our momentum going.  Most of the shops were closing by 6:00, but a select few stayed open later.  We eat at a great restaurant by recommendation called O'Rorkes.  And incidentally there were a number of stores that indicated they were Polish, or Irish too in this downtown area. 

So Saturday was a great day all in all.  We decided that on Sunday morning starting at 10:00 there was a $35 double decker tour bus which was two hours long.  It was narrated the whole time, and we'd take that tour before having to return north.  It was a quiet night, not getting too dark until past 9:30, but having been outside all day and in the fresh air, it does sap your energy.