Are You Ready for Some FOOTBALL?

Oh boy! With the threat of no NFL season this year looming over 2 die-hard football fans, imagine our complete surprise and delight to be contacted by HBO Sports to ask if they could film at the Inn for their special segment on head coaches John and Jim Harbaugh!

John Harbaugh has been the Baltimore Ravens' head coach since 2008, and his brother Jim will take over the head coaching position in San Francisco this year for the 49'ers. Together they are the first pair of brothers to serve as NFL Head Coaches. Their teams will face each other for the first time this Thanksgiving Day, which also happens to be their parents Jack & Jackie's 50th wedding anniversary!

The entire Harbaugh family visited Gettysburg for the day in late June to tour the Battlefield, and they were followed by the team from HBO's "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel" while they were in town. We had the privilege of being the filming site for correspondent Andrea Kremer'sinterview with Jack & Jackie Harbaugh. They talked about raising their family and dealing with the ins and outs of Jack's extensive college football coaching career, including his head coaching jobs at Western Michigan and Western Kentucky Universities. To say football runs in the blood lines in this family is quite an understatement!

During the shoot the entire family was here, relaxing and having fun. You'd be hard-pressed to find a more genuinely friendly and down to earth group of folks. We did give full disclosure: Your innkeepers are well-known and permanent members of the Steeler Nation, and at the time of the shoot our house was FULL of black & gold fans (Good Timing!).

Coach John was an incredibly good sport about it, chatting with everyone and signing some autographs. What a class act.

We were fortunate to have beautiful weather, and the shot was completed in the back yard. Todd's Mom would have been over the moon to see her flowers getting filmed for national TV! We got a quiet chuckle out of that.

We were very excited to hear both Coaches express confidence that there WILL be an NFL season this year. And now there really must be, as the Ravens' home opener is against none other than their division rivals, the Pittsburgh Steelers!

The crew from HBO Sports was just incredible, when they were finished you would never even have known they were here (to the extent that one of the crew carried Molly's stuffed toy inside to be sure the whole area was cleaned up!). We finished with a great group photo.

The Gettysburg segment will be featured on the July 19th episode of HBO's "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel", airing at 10 pm. Be sure to check it out!

Summer is in Full Swing!

Greetings from Gettysburg! We have finally gotten past a cold,wet spring and are reveling in some beautiful summer-like weather here on the Battlefield. It's been tough on local farmers, the ground has been too wet to harvest their wheat and rye, and as such summer corn has not yet been planted. So don't be looking for "Knee-high by July" cornstalks when you come to visit!

But with the recent dry spell things are finally getting back to a more normal schedule. The honeysuckle which grows everywhere on the field is in full bloom and smells heavenly to boot.

FIRST DAY BATTLEFIELD WORK!

As part of the continued Battlefield restoration, the Friends of Gettysburg has installed new snake rail fencing on the July 1^st Battlefield.

Fencing has been erected along the Railroad Cut, Reynolds Avenue, Buford Avenue, and Wadsworth Avenue. We are excited to see the First Day getting some attention.

Rufus Dawes would be happy to see these fences represented here! Below is a picture taken from the railroad cut looking south towards Chambersburg Pike. This is the field where the 6^th Wisconsin charged the Mississippians in the railroad cut. Many of these fences would have been here in 1863, and became significant obstacles for the troops:

To the right is view west from the bridge over Reynolds Avenue with the 14^th Brooklyn monument in the foreground. Hall’s Battery had a disabled gun stuck in a fence opening in this field as the Confederates bore down on them from the West.

With all the volunteers' hard work, you can now see (at left, looking north from the railroad cut), the three rows of fencing between the cut and Wadsworth Avenue, all three of which the troops would have had to contend with during the brutal fighting of July 1st.

SUMMER RANGER PROGRAMS HAVE STARTED!

The Park's excellent series of 7 days/week programming is also well underway. Click here for a complete listing of events and topics.

Hope to see you soon on the Battlefield!

~Todd

Gettysburg Battlefield's Newest Licensed Guide!

We are THRILLED to announce that the newest member of the Gettysburg Licensed Battlefield Guide force is our dear friend Maureen Quinn!

Many of you have met Maureen here at the Inn as she has been a frequent guest over the past few years while pursuing this goal. She is an absolute wealth of knowledge on all things historical! In addition to this latest certification, Maureen is an active docent for the National Cathedral and a Licensed Tour Guide for Washington, DC. Maureen has introduced us to so many fascinating subjects, from monument sculpture here in Gettysburg to Revolutionary War forts in the Hudson River Valley. Be careful, if you get her anywhere NEAR an historic cemetery you will have to drag her out of it!

Maureen's first visit to Gettysburg was a decade ago. She was fascinated by the beauty and symbolism on the different monuments here. Having just relocated to the DC area she realized how close to home Gettysburg is for her, and thus began MANY trips to the area to really dig into all the historical info. She began her pursuit of the LBG certification in earnest about six years ago.

The process to become a Gettysburg Licensed Battlefield Guide is quite rigorous. The license is given through the National Park Service. A written exam is offered once every two years. To prepare for the written exam candidates are given a multi-page reading list and encouraged to learn as much as they can about the Battle of Gettysburg and the entire Civil War...yikes! It is daunting to say the least.

A typical group size for the written exam is 125-150 people. It is not enough to merely PASS the exam, candidates must rank in the top 20 scores to be considered to move on to the oral exam. For the exam that was offered in December, 2010 the score needed to rank in the top 20 was 96%. Talk about no room for error!!! These people certainly know their stuff, down to the nitty gritty details and trivia.

Once a candidate is ranked, they await their turn to take the oral exam. For the job of Battlefield Guide it's obviously important that someone not only know the material, but be able to share it with visitors in a way that is engaging and interesting. So now candidates must go from the level of trivia to the level of broad overview, to give a first time visitor a 2 hour tour that covers the entire Gettysburg Battlefield. Guides need to know not only about the fighting that took place here, but also about the monuments that mark where that fighting happened (including when they were placed here and by whom, details on the symbolism and data portrayed on the monuments, and even the materials the monuments are made from)! They also know information on the Soldiers National Cemetery and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, as well as info on the town and citizens who witnessed this fighting in 1863.

This rigorous process ensures that only the best of the best become Battlefield Guides here, and we all benefit from it! You can be sure that any LBG you are lucky enough to tour with will give you accurate and entertaining information. All this for only $50 for a two hour tour, you just can't find a better bargain.

Think you've got what it takes to become a Gettysburg Licensed Battlefield Guide? Go here for details on how to get started. We know a nice place you can stay when you start preparing :-)

CONGRATULATIONS MAUREEN, WE ARE PROUD OF YOU AND SO HAPPY TO HAVE BEEN PART OF YOUR JOURNEY!

~Todd, Christine & Molly

4 Civil War Battlefields in One Day!

Ok, even we have to admit that Gettysburg isn't the ONLY Civil War Battlefield in the country (just the best)! So during a free day in early March we decided to celebrate Christine's birthday and the approaching 150th Anniversary of the beginning of the US Civil War with a day trip to Virginia to see some of those other historic sites. Molly came along too, as you all know we need LOTS of supervising to be sure we're doing a good job!

We left the Doubleday Inn at 6:30 AM and headed down I-95 to our first stop at Fredericksburg. It was a cold but very clear and sunny day, and the lack of foliage made it easy to interpret all the Battlefields as we went and take some great pictures.

Fredericksburg has a very nice Visitor Center

with a 20 minute introductory movie. We also picked up a copy of the Park Service's Battlefield Map and an audio tour CD with which we were able to cover the entire field. We spent about 3 hours overall and felt we got to explore pretty well, although our schedule didn't leave us any time for meandering downtown, which looked very quaint with some interesting shops and restaurants.

To see the extreme incline at Marye's Heights was truly awe-inspiring (pic above shows the mansion on top of the heights and the original stone wall bordering the sunken road). It is very difficult to imagine the courage that must have been necessary as a Union soldier charging against such a well-fortified position. Another fascinating display was the 30 pound Parrot Gun (pic below) that the Confederates had delivered by train from Richmond to the Battlefield at Fredericksburg (for comparison, the Parrot guns here at Gettysburg were all 10 or 20 pounds in size). Molly was just glad she wasn't on the team that had to pull it to the top of Telegraph Hill!

Our next stop was Chancellorsville, just a few miles west. Here we were most interested to see the spot of the fatal wounding of Stonewall Jackson. This field also marks the final meeting place of Generals Lee and Jackson as they planned the infamous countermarch which would lead to the routing flank attack on the Union Army. Another very nice Visitor's Center with a small museum and introductory movie helped us get oriented. This park also had a CD driving tour which we enjoyed thoroughly.

It would be General Lee's decisive victory at Chancellorsville in May of 1863 that would provide the final prompt to move his army and the war northward to Gettysburg that summer.

Next onward to the nearby Wildnerness Battlefield, where the amputated arm of General Jackson was buried in the family cemetary of the Lacy family who lived at Ellwood House. The house and grounds are open to the public and the farm is a rare spot of cultivation in the midst of what is to this day dense forest and underbrush. The house and a gorgeous, absolutely ENORMOUS black walnut tree (surely a witness to the brutal fighting that took place here) are pictured below.

The Wildnerness Battlefield did not have a visitor's center but did have its own CD driving tour and a Park Service map which helped us navigate the many back roads that wind throughout the field itself. There is also an outdoor exhibit shelter which gives a good overview of the fighting and the specific points of interest.

Finally, chasing daylight a bit, we headed south to Spotsylvania Court House just as both armies did after the fighting at the Wilderness ended in May, 1864.

At Spotsylvania there was again no visitor center, but a small exhibit shelter and a walking trail that takes you over the famous Mule Shoe salient and Bloody Angle.

Most of the wayside markers had been removed (likely being refurbished for the upcoming 150th Anniversary) so we didn't get to go as in-depth on this field as we did the rest, but it piqued our interest enough to ensure that we will plan a return visit. Todd was very interested in seeing the spot where Union General "Uncle" John Sedgwick was killed.

At 6:30 pm we were 12 hours into our marathon day and the light was definitely gone, so we began the 2.5 hour drive home. It was a fun, interesting and very educational

day. If anyone is planning a day trip from Gettysburg to any of these excellent Battlefields, it is very doable! If you plan to go please let us know; we saved all our info and the Audio CD's which you are welcome to borrow!

Wishing everyone a warm and wonderful Spring and some time to get out and explore!

~Your Doubleday Friends