I’ll be the first to admit that my grasp of American history is a little shaky, but we are learning lots as we visit the different cities around the states. Gettysburg 
was the site of a huge battle 
between the Northern (Union) and Southern (Confederate) troops in the American Civil War in which over 50,000 soldiors lost their lives. It only lasted 3 days but was the culmination of many years of fighting and its conclusion (spoiler alert – the North won) led to the “Four score and seven years ago…” speech by Lincoln in the ‘Gettysburg address’ made in November of the same year.
We first went to the Gettysburg History Museum which has a re-enactment of the entire 3 days – in miniature. It is the largest military diorama in the United States covering over 800 sq ft and each of the 20,000 odd models have been hand painted and positioned to show the path of the battle over the 1st, 2nd and 3rd of July 1863. With a 30 minute light and sound show to illustrate the battle it’s oddly impressive, although Jon and I both felt we suffered from not always understanding completely who was fighting on what side!
We walked around a second museum showing more of the history and several dioramas with full sized models – a little bit like a Tussards Wax Museum, but with more of a story (and a lot of guns)
Once we’d looked around the models, we then decided to get back into our car and follow an audio tour around a circuit of the battlefields. Its really interesting to be able to see history and then drive around where it actually happened – there is a 40 mile route around the path the fighting took over the three days, with thousands of statues and plaques commemorating the batallions, soldiers (and in one case, a small dog) on both sides.
We loved the idea of a driving tour but, in reality, keeping to a steady 15 miles an hour to be in sync with a CD and following an artistic interpretation of a map in a small leaflet got a little confusing, so we called it a day after the first third of the battle and decided to move on to Phillidelphia where we have more history waiting for us tomorrow.