Horses and History

Have just finished dinner consisting of turkey leftovers from last night and s'mores made over a tabletop s'more maker, and am very content. We went out for a big lunch (seafood -- lobster bisque and coconut shrimp for me; scallops, tilapia, mahi mahi and crab legs for various other people), then traipsing around a horse farm where we saw brand-new colts nursing and later the battlefields of Gettysburg. I also got to see for the first time in...neither of us remembers how many years! She was treated upon arriving to one of my younger son's finer displays of temper -- both boys had their GameBoys taken away for the day after sneaking them into their sleeping bags and playing them after 10 p.m. last night -- but they calmed down after they had some food in them.

We went over to Hanover Shoe Farms, which breeds horses for harness racing and has over 1000 horses, including some of the most valuable studs in the region ($10,000 for "servicing"). We saw six or seven foals about three days old and a number of stallions. (Note: I am not condoning harness racing or any other form of horse racing. It's free to walk around the farm and see the horses, and the people who take care of the animals are obviously very knowledgeable and affectionate towards them. We just went to see the babies.)










After stopping at home to get the dog, we then went over to Little Round Top at Gettysburg National Battlefield, which is one of the more rocky areas atop a hill. The kids and dog climbed over rocks and the rest of us looked down at the various statues and monuments that litter the hillside and the "Valley of Death."





On leaving the battlefield we stopped at a couple of souvenir shops in Gettysburg -- the boys needed to get blue and grey caps, of course, so we could reenact the Civil War at home, as if that doesn't happen every night anyway -- and were treated to a noisy display of musket fire by more formal reenactors. We'll see whether the Civil War this evening requires another morning without GameBoys.