Crystal G

Taken yesterday afternoon:

Since I was home a little early yesterday, I decided to take some time to play in the stream with Bastian. It really is a beautiful stream, there are even some minnows in a few spots. It needs some cleaning up of some small amounts of trash around the edges (not sure if it washes down stream or what), and some branches that have been swept down stream. There are also a lot of thorn bushes along part of it that I’d like to clear some out so I can open up the stream more for resting (that’ll be a pain).

Dad says there’s a peaceful spot up the stream further in the woods that I’ll probably go check out at some point. I’m amazed at the amount of rocks around here. BIG rocks. We never had rocks like this down in Carroll County. I really like them.

Dad says he found an old horse-shoe in the garden. No clue if it was from a horse in the civil war or not, but I’m willing to bet it is more than likely simply because there’s an old civil war hospital two houses down from us. I want to get my uncle over with his metal detector and see what else is buried here.

I can tell that Gettysburg Tourism season has started. I hear it’s a nightmare. Fortunately I think I’m enough out of the touristy area that I shouldn’t have to worry about it too much unless going through town.

I’ve seen a lot of campers drive by recently. The Grove plans to have a yard sale up here one weekend to make some money for the Grove. I’m definitely in a decent spot to do so I think (I hope).

Dad had a biopsy done on his leg last week to see if there’s anything else going on with his leg that’s helping cause the ulcers (you’d think they’d have found something, I dunno, a few decades ago). No results yet.

I got a call from dad today that he ran over his cellphone with the lawnmower……….again. It cracks me up when he does it, cause I know he feels bad about it. But it’s still funny how often it happens (one time he did lose it plowing snow though, I’ll give him that).

Fortunately for me, Virgin Mobile (our carrier) will send a replacement phone free, you just pay shipping. I will have to buy him a new case to wear on his belt though, so all in all I’m looking at $20 I’ll be spending.

It’s moments like these that I’m glad we have a land-line though. As opposed as I am to it, knowing my dad it’s definitely a good thing to keep around, despite the extra cost.

And if I don’t hype how much I love Virgin mobile enough, no contracts! Best cell service I’ve ever had out of any I’ve tried. And reasonable prices (for me).

I mentioned before while learning more history of my new hometown Gettysburg, that there was only one civilian killed during the entire battle.

One of the Gettysburg blogs I frequent, the Gettysburg Daily, just posted a segment on the house she was killed in (not lived in), including pictures of the damage left behind of the fatal shot that killed her.

I love reading this blog everyday.  It gives great insight on the history around here, which I deeply want to learn about.  I’m amazed that living in Westminster so long, I never once came up to Gettysburg.  Honestly I never knew it was so close.  Now that I live here, at least I’ll have all the time in the world to explore and learn.

I just spoke with my dad and he said a friend of the family that was in the accident this morning stopped by to give us their contact info. Apparently the woman has a broken hip and some fractures in her legs (explains the screaming agony when they pulled her out), and the man has some fractures in his face.

Apparently the ambulance guy says he hit the dog with the ambulance? But I don’t remember seeing that, and I watched him arrive and leave. But no one knows where the dog is, if its hurt, or worse…dead. It may require some searching in the woods.

Additional Edit: On the way home my I called my dad again and he said the dog was hit a second time by a woman. But apparently not hit directly, just sorta side-swiped. The woman and my dad went all through the woods and couldn’t find the dog. I did some whistling and put out some food when I got home, but I have yet to see this dog.

I was woken up this morning around 4am by some guy screaming outside. Dad was up putting wood in the woodstove, and a young couple hit a patch of ice out in front of our house and smashed directly into a huge rock on our property. The guy was able to get out and scream for help, which is what woke me up (not the crash). Then my dad ran out and yelled for me to call 911 (whaaa? *in a daze*). The ambulance actually slid past us when it finally saw us trying to flag it down, so I know the roads were crazy icy.

The woman was stuck, they had to use jaws of life to get her out. The guy was in pain but could walk. They had a dog with them too but it jumped out and fled the moment the guy got out.

They blocked off the road with all kinds of flashing light vehicles. It took them an hour to get the woman out, and when they were pulling her out she was screaming in pain which sent chills down my spine. They are getting the vehicle towed now. I took a brief walk in the woods where I could see to see if I could see the dog anywhere, but nothing. If we can find him we’ll hold onto him and feed him until the owners get out of the hospital.

I’m pretty tired now, I may go into work late and let some of this ice melt and get this chill out of my bones.

Here are some pictures after I came back inside. They had already gotten everyone out and were just cleaning up at this point. You can see the huge black void in front of the vehicle, that’s the big rock they hit head on.

From Snow and Ice Shenanigans

This is surprisingly difficult to do, simply because anything and everything relating to Gettysburg seems to be about the battle and the Civil War aspect. While interesting and very relevant, I kinda want to learn more about the city itself. However some of the Battle facts were pretty interesting too.

• Though Gettysburg is known as a Civil War Battle site and location of President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, the town was the site of Sanuel Gettys’ farmstead. After the Revolutionary War, James Gettys, Samuel’s son, purchased a 116 acre tract from his father’s farmstead. By 1786 he had laid out 210 lots around the Square, which still remains as the center of the town.
  Thus Gettysburg was born. I would probably be within this bracket of land
• National Park Service is currently working on a “restoration” project in the battlefields, in which they will remove 576 acres of “non-historic trees,” re-plant 115 acres of “historic” trees, and replace 160 acres of orchards, using ornamental instead of fruit-bearing trees. They will also maintain firewood lots and thickets to appear as they did during battle.
• A popular attraction held in Gettysburg is the Reenactment of the Battle of Gettysburg which is held every summer for the three days around the fourth of July. Events include cannons being fired, marching over the same grounds as the solders did, fake deaths, sleeping in tents and really reliving the life of a union or confederate soldier during the time of the war. Amongst the tours, ghost stories and reenactments there are also a variety of restaurants to choose from while visiting Gettysburg.
• The land that now comprises the center of Adams County was purchased from the Iroquois Indians by the family of William Penn in 1736. At the time there was no official Gettysburg, Adams County, state of Pennsylvania or United States. Within a few years 150 families had “leap-frogged” over the English Quakers and Germans, who had settled to the east of here, to this area, then known by the name of its main tributary, Marsh Creek. Many of these settlers were Scots-Irish who had left Northern Ireland to escape English persecution.
• With the first Pennsylvania Frame of Government in 1776 and the Constitution of the United States in 1787, the growing population of the area decided they wanted to separate from York County. A new county was approved by the state legislature in 1800 (the year 2000 will be our bicentennial) and was named after the President at that time, John Adams. Gettysburg was chosen as the county seat.
• If you talked to a Gettysburg citizen about their recollections of the battle, they would tell you that the three days of fighting were horrifying but that that was not the worst part of the ordeal. After the battle was over, the destruction to the buildings, loss of food and crops and thousands of bloody injured crying for help busied the townspeople for months. The experience was something they never forgot.
• Gettysburg’s oldest and most historic home is the Dobbin House, which also acts as a tavern in modern day.
• Agriculture makes up the major portion of the economy of the area with tourism a close second. The “Adams County Fruit Belt”, along the eastern slopes of the South Mountain Range, has miles of orchards which provide great revenues for the county. Though not the largest sector of the county’s economy, manufacturing is the largest employment sector, with 40% of total nonagricultural employment
• The population of Gettysburg is approximately 7,025 as of 1990
• Every year, thousands of bike riders descend upon Gettysburg for Bike Week. My dad says this is a site to behold. They literally shut down the whole damn town
• More than 3,000 horses were killed at the Battle of Gettysburg
• There are over 830 monuments and 400 guns located at the Gettysburg Battlefield.
• During the Battle of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the only civilian to die was twenty-year-old Mary Virginia “Jennie” Wade, who was shot through the heart while making bread. Congress passed an Act which allowed the flag at her grave to fly day and night. Only the graves of 2 women have such a distinction. The other is Betsy Ross.
• Some idea of the tremendous work at Gettysburg may be inferred from the fact stated that more shells were discharged in the single battle of Gettysburg than were employed in all the battles that Napoleon ever fought.
• Adams County is on the famous “Mason-Dixon Line” which marked the line between North and South during the Civil War.
• Gettysburg was also the home of the 34th President of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower. His farmhouse here was the only home he ever owned. The farm is now open to the public.
• Caledonia State Park is named for an iron furnace that was owned by Thaddeus Stevens. Part of this park is in neighboring Franklin County. It is just off U.S. Route 30 between Chambersburg and Gettysburg.
• 2.9 million people visited Gettysburg in 2007