2011 Reunion/Phase 4 - York, PA

York and the Long-Lost Relatives

The Yorktowne Hotel (another official historic hotel) is very nice and located right downtown. Our room is on the 8th (top) floor and has a view of rooftops and a church steeple. There were supposed to be about 30 of us but a few didn't make it due to flooding problems. We had appetizers and then several of us walked to a local sports restaurant where we had a corn chowder and a Philly cheese steak sandwich (we're close to Philadelphia).

Friday the bus was ready for us at 8:00 a.m. We were busy trying to wake up, so missed breakfast. But it was a beautiful day for touring Gettysburg with our own guide. It's an amazing place - they're clearing areas and working to make it appear more like it had been in 1863. After a quick lunch we saw the movie and then went in to see the Cyclorama - one year to paint and five years to restore. http://www.nps.gov/gett/historyculture/gettysburg-cyclorama.htm
What was most amazing was the extent of the attached museum - it was a maze of rooms with so much history. I think we'll need to go back and spend more time just with that.

Then to the David Wills house where Lincoln stayed before giving his famous address. We saw the room he'd been in and the bed where he'd slept. It's a small house (by today's standards). The house next door still has an unexploded cannonball embedded in a brick below a window.

It was still too flooded to get to a couple of gravesites of ancestors but we did drive past a home once occupied by Weyrich Rudisill. Then on to dinner at a local winery (Naylor) for a winetasting and German dinner plus entertainment by a local German band complete with Fluglehorns and singer. I didn't see the glockenspiel they were supposed to have. But it was lively and the sound reverberated around the large metal roofed building.

Then back to the Yorktowne to rest up for the next day.

Saturday

We were up early to not miss breakfast and the service was so slow we had to point to the bus outside the window to get their attention. Then everyone came running with our stuff (oatmeal and fruit plate which we couldn't finish). But we made it to the bus on time.

We did visit the gravesite of the Philip Rudisill family - tombstones dating between 1620 and 1650. Several of the family had taken a course in gravesite preservation so the marble tombstones were encased in glass and several layers of newspaper had been laid under more earth to keep the weeds down. They had also fenced in the area as further protection.

We drove through Amish country and saw the horse-drawn carriages and people dressed in typical garb. There were electrical wires everywhere but not all houses had connections. We stopped at a huge Flower and Craft Warehouse then to lunch at the Shady Maple Smorgasbord that had a huge gift shop downstairs. Then a bus ride to Strasbourg Rail Road for a steam locomotive ride in restored cars to Paradise. Then to dinner (another delicious smorgasbord!). We all rolled back to the bus for another beautiful ride through farm country to the hotel and goodbyes.

We didn't have name tags so we'll probably forget who's who and who goes with whom. Hopefully we'll communicate by internet between now and the next one (maybe Williamsburg in two years).