Day One: Gettysburg

Day One: Gettysburg

What a great start to the vacation! We headed out Route 57 and had our first offensive smell...skunk.. before we got out of Hackettstown!! One thing about being on the bike.. there's no place to hide from nature's fragrances. We had the iPod blasting tunes, and we sang alongwith the songs, happy to be on the bike and on our way to stop one, Gettysburg, PA.

Keeping with our promise to savor the local fare, we passed on a pizza parlor and had lunch at 501 Grill and Tavern in Mt. Aetna. Good food, nice atmosphere. Nothing out of the ordinary....well, except the cook, and she was, well, interesting, to say the least.

There was some tough traffic on day one. We hit our first snag on PA 501. We were surrounded by beautiful PA farmland, terrific old barns, cows in the fields, beautifully manicured, green farms - all great scenes of Americana, but simply sitting on the bike is tough on a hot and humid day. Our second snag was in on Route 30 in York, PA, interestingly, right outside the Harley factory where they build Electra Glides. The traffic was bad enough on it own, but it also happened to be quitting time at the Harley factory. All kinds of bikes came roaring out of the parking lot onto Route 30, and despite the extra traffic, it was actually very cool.

As we crept along, a young man on a customized black Harley pulled up along side us. We struck up an excellent conversation with him as we moved along.. stopped.. moved along and stopped for about 5 miles. On one stop, he beamed and said to us, "I built that bike." The fact of the matter is, every ElectraGlide built comes through that plant, so he really did build our bike. He really spoke with such pride about the work that he did and the products he produced.

We told him we were on the first day of a two week vacation and he sighed with mock jealousy. He suggested we take a road called The Dragon's Tail somewhere in the Smokey Mountains. It's, as he described it, 30 curves in 6 miles, or something equally unfathomable to me! I think we're going to pass. : )

 He was a really nice and personable guy, and I'm sorry I didn't get a picture of him to post here!

The third snag was further along on Route 30, outside of Lancaster.  Again, lots of great scenery to keep me amused, but the broken down tractor trailer created quite the traffic jam on the rural two lane road.

We arrived in Gettysburg about 5:00 and our first stop was, of course, Battlefield Harley, for the first additions to the tee shirt collection. We headed into the center of town and saw the David Wills house, the location where Lincoln wrote the immortal Gettysburg Address. Since this was a stop, and not a destination, (and it was nearing 6:00) there was no time to get to the battlefields (I'll remind my husband at least 10 times on this trip that he's promised a long weekend here and all the history I can handle.) We found an outdoor table at The Pub - yep, simply called The Pub - where we had an awesome crab and spinach dip and some sandwiches.... until the heavens opened!! So, Plan B when you're riding a bike and it starts to pour? You go inside to the bar. To Jason's chagrin, the bar television was featuring a baseball game....the Boston Red Soxs!! He just can't get away from them!! Okay.. it was really an Orioles game... they just happened to be playing the Sox.

Luckilly, the rain, although heavy when it fell, didn't last too long, and we were soon back on the bike, and now here in the hotel.

All in all, it was a good day one. Will get the pictures up as soon as I finish my Bailey's and coffee.

On to West Virginia tomorrow (Can you channel Loretta Lynn and sing Coal Miner's Daughter with me??? Or was that Kentucky? Either way, doesn't matter. We'll be in Kentucky on Sunday!)