Rock and Racehorses: The Blog

My husband and I drove to Gettysburg for a weekend anniversary getaway. The drive was really pretty and it took about 3.5 hours. Rocked out to some homemade mix CDs on the way out.

We arrived in town in the early afternoon and stopped at the visitor’s center. Then we set up a bus tour and saw the battlefield atop a double-decker bus. From the bus, I could see the tippy-tops of the monuments and statues. This is Gen’l George Meade and his famous horse, Baldy (later called Old Baldy). This horse was tough as NAILS- he was wounded 14 times.

I strongly dislike shooting landscapes, but it’s a lot more fun shooting them from the top of a moving bus. Composition and exposure on the fly ;^)

After our bus tour, we walked around town and got dinner at O’Rorke’s. Then we drove back to the park in our car. Since we already did the first tour, we were sort of familiar with the layout and got to take our time looking around, but the park is very large and we still got lost and wandered around a lot. I’m the kind of person who enjoys getting lost, and you could not get *really* lost out there without ending up on a main road.

I got some pretty photos at sunset- I’m obsessed with silhouettes these days. It’s a zillion times easier when the horses don’t move. This is the General Oliver Howard Monument. From what I’ve read, this statue was sculpted later than many of the other equestrian statues in the park. It has a more rounded and modern form to it, as evidenced by the exteme flexion of the horse’s neck.

General Henry Slocum. There’s also an equestrian statue of Slocum at Prospect Park in New York. Henry Warner Slocum (September 24, 1827 – April 14, 1894), was a Union general during the American Civil War and later served in the United States House of Representatives from New York. During the war, he was one of the youngest major generals in the Army and fought numerous major battles in the Eastern Theater and in Georgia and the Carolinas.

I could not find the name of his horse :^)

Same statue, different exposure…

Here’s the Pennsylvania State Monument and a little cavalry monument in the foreground…

And here’s my husband rocking the monument: “Hellooooo Gettysburg!”

After our drive, we went on a ghost tour- it was fun to hear the old stories.

The next morning, we woke at dawn and went back to the battlefield for one more look. It was so nice to see it in the still of morning.

This is the Louisiana Monument, sculpted by Donald De Lue. Originally from Boston, De Lue lived his later years in Leonardo, NJ.

A female figure representing the spirit of the Confederacy floats above a fallen artilleryman, with the Confederate battle flag clutched to his heart. She blows a trumpet over his dead body, and her right arm is outstretched above her head. I set up the photo *just so* to get that little sparkle in the corner of the statue- no filters used.

And the Virginia Monument, by dawn’s early light.

And Robert E. Lee and Traveller atop the VA Monument.

I was photographing a larger monument when this little guy caught my eye. His head peeks out of a large stone monument.

And a cannon at dawn…