Day 2: Gettysburg, PA

Today, I checked out the Gettysburg battlefield. It was very cool and informative, and I kind of felt like a tour guide to my parents, since I had just learned about it in my AP history class. (An interesting thing about the free-soil party is that not all of them were abolitionists. Some wanted the admitted states to be free so that there wouldn't be any blacks in the area.) I ran down part of the road and I felt like I was a part of the war. You could almost feel the presence of the soldiers, it was crazy.

But God, did I feel like a tourist. There were some things that just made a mockery of the whole thing. Get your picture transposed onto a picturesque background of the battlefield. A T-shirt that made Abraham Lincoln look like one of those people in those old iPod commercials. You know what I'm talking about. It was gross, and I kind of felt bad. The people that fought there would be insulted by that shit. But what am I to do? Nothing. Just sit and watch as the tourists infiltrate.

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