Fete de La Musique du Milwaukee

This here's a picture of the Zoe at Milwaukee's Bastille Days. The Eiffel-like tower behind her was rigged up by the Milwaukee School of Engineering, an institution which provided many back-packed students for me to try and not hit with my car on the way to work. I was usually successful. Milwaukee is a city that knows how to party in an international sort of way, and mid-July brought us this French fete. I'm not sure why, but this year was the first year we actually went to the party, even though it was highly recommended by many of our friends many years running.

There were several bandstands set up by the city, and filled with local musicians. I was surprised to see that next to none of the bands were playing anything in french, or france-related. This is probably because the majority of the fair-going public are not very entertained by accordian-accompanied schmultz in a foreign language. Honestly, France has severely dropped the boule when it comes to intriguing modern music (-M- excluded). Instead we got to enjoy yet another medley of Johnny Cash songs at least an octave and a fourth too high. Oh, and Celtic music...shudder.

Regardez s'il vous plait how awesome this Bastille Days poster is! Oui, oui, I know that this isn't the poster that goes with the year we actually went, but I liked the 2006 poster a lot. I gotta give Milwaukee a lot of credit for making this festival loads of fun, they had a bunch of street performers and murals all over the place. Did you see the cool aerial photograph of Cathedral Square that I stole off the internet (above)? Looks like quite the good time. I'll never forget the year that we were actually at the Eiffel Tower on Bastille Day, what an awesome experience. To tell you the truth if you were to replace the music, and the beverage, this party would have been very similar to the Fete de la Musique held in Paris every June 21st. Everyone in the city is encouraged to perform music outside their houses/offices and get totally wasted on wine and European adrenaline. That was a grand time in Levallois. I love Milwaukee in the Summer time.

Mount Horeb Mustard Museum

The Mount Horeb Mustard Museum was conceived and created by none other than the assistant Attorney General of Wisconsin. There are over 4,800 different types of mustard in there. Unfortunately, the place was closed so we couldn't go in and sample the mustard. Shameful. Instead we could only look into the window and drool. It makes sense to me that the world's largest collection of mustard would be located in a part of the country so overflown with sausage.

I'd also like to include this picture that Sara had me take outside of one of the local pubs. I swear this was all her idea.

The Wisconsin Trollway

During our trip to Madison we couldn't pass up the short ride to Mount Horeb so we could take a ride down the legendary Trollway; a road lined with troll statues. Weird. Here are a few pictures of Zoe and I with our favorites. This was during Zoe's "hug all tall wooden objects" phase, so we had to stop at each one so she could get to know him or her at a very personal level. We found a map online that supposedly shows the location of all the trolls, but there were nowhere near as many as the map claimed. Perhaps some of them went back to their beloved Norway before the cold winter set in. If any of you ever make your way to Mount Horeb, it's probably best to do it at the beginning of the summer before the annual troll migration begins. I wonder why we didn't stop by Chris Farley's grave while we were in Madison? That would have been a good photo opportunity to feed our strange hunger to visit the burial locales of the famous.

The Wisconsin State Capitol

The Wisconsin State Capitol Building is the prettiest capitol building I've ever seen. Inside and out it is absolutely gorgeous. The building is a great big "X" with each "X" arm pointing out to the cardinal directions. Isn't it wild what kind of amazing things people can build? I look around at a building like this and I just can't fathom the work it must have taken to build it. And then I consider that this is but one of 50 state capitol buildings in our country, and each of them are unique, and most are beautiful. I just spent far too much time looking at pictures of state capitol buildings on wikipedia. That's an hour of my life I'm never getting back.

I like that the insides of the building are all different colors. From the second floor you can look down on the floor below the dome, and wave as your favorite state legislators walk by. The design of the inside actually reminded me a lot of Napoleon's tomb in Paris, just picture a giant gold-encrusted casket sitting below the dome and you've pretty much got a twin building. I wonder why they put such a short guy in such a huge casket. The building is all full of stairs, 2,782 of them, which rendered the place a virtual jungle gym for the Zoe. As I was chasing her from one staircase to the other, we came across original replicas of the Liberty Bell and the Wisconsin state constitution. Pretty exciting. The Wisconsin state capitol building is only three feet shorter than it's mommy in Washington D.C.

Since blogging about state capitol buildings is pretty much the pinnacle of internet-excitement (we should get YouTube out here to film it!), I think I should definitely tell the story of why the preceding Wisconsin state capitol building burnt down. Here's the shortened version: In February of 1904 the freshly repainted ceiling caught fire and the blaze slowly began engulfing the building. Since the nearby reservoir was empty, the state called in a firefighting crew from Milwaukee to bring water to the site and douse the flames. Unfortunately, en route all their equipment froze beyond use, and they had to watch as the entire North, South and West wings of the building burnt completely to the ground. I wonder why they didn't just put the equipment closer to the giant flames and let the fire thaw it out. Perhaps the frigid temperatures had effected their judgment. I just think it's hilarious that my previous state of residence lost its capitol building due to the state's most unappealing feature - locals with frozen brains.

I thought it was sad to read that the fire of 1904 destroyed the taxidermied remains of Old Abe the Civil War eagle. He was a vicious bald eagle that the Wisconsin 8th Infantry carried with them into battle during the first part of the war. Old Abe would scream and yell and raise a ruckus and the rebels would run away squealing like little girls. History says that Old Abe lost feathers to bullets and passing generals would tip their hats to him. Old Abe became the model for the 101st airbourne's Screaming Eagle patch, and the Case tractor company logo. There's a replica of Old Abe in the capitol building now, but that's just not the same.

Strawberry Days in Cedarburg

These pictures were taken in Cedarburg, Wisconsin during their annual Strawberry Days festival in early June. There's absolutely nothing interesting about Cedarburg except that the locals worship strawberries and drink a lot of beer. Actually, the only reason I'm including these pictures on the blog is that I really like this giant Leinenkugel's chair. I thought it was pretty hilarious to watch the chair security guard try to stop all the kids from sitting in the chair without spilling his beer. Heaven forbid that someone sits in a chair! I miss the summer.

Where Ma was born

That's right, this is the actual birthplace of Ma Ingalls. Strange how her parents named her Ma. What if she'd have become a non child-have-able person? I've always had this same question about the Berenstain Bear family. The reason we decided to not call Zoe "Sister" is that we wanted to try her on for size before we committed to providing her a sibling. But speaking of sisters, if any of you were one, or had one, you probably watched Little House on the Prairie while eating your after-school snack. As you likely know, Caroline Lake Quiner Ingalls most certainly did have children, and depending on which season you watched, most of them lived. She was born just down the road from us in Brookfield, Wisconsin. Charles Ingalls came along when Caroline was 21, they got married, and eventually moved from the big woods to the Minnesota prairie. Sara and I spent most of last year watching the entire series of Little House and we learned a lot from Caroline Ingalls, mostly that no matter how hard a modern woman tries, she can never hope to become as domesticated as the frontiers woman. Thanks a lot Caroline. No worries though, we men are just as unlikely to measure up to Charles Ingalls, we're just not hard-working or dreamy enough. This here's a picture of Charles and Caroline, she's the one on the left. Wow, he looks just like Michael Landon...not.

We probably drove by this sign a hundred times before we finally stopped and read it. We got pretty excited and took a bunch of pictures. When we moved out to Wisconsin we drove on I-90 past Walnut Grove. I really wish we would have stopped to take some pictures of the area. This is just the sort of thing that really floats our boat(s) nowadays. Why did old western people insist on living in freezing areas? I mean why didn't Charles and Caroline just pick up and move to Florida instead of staying in the midwest? Yeah yeah, I know, probably because the land was all but free in our nation's armpits, and you can't grow the same crops in the midwest as you can in other places, but seriously? Minnesota? Of course, this is coming from a guy that moved his family to Milwaukee. Humans are strange.

The Organ Piper

Here’s a picture of the Zoe and I at our favoritest pizza place in the whole wide world…well at least in Milwaukee anyway. This is a place that Donny introduced us to right after we moved to Wisconsin, and we became instant addicts. Every year Zoe wants to go to Organ Piper Pizza, mostly at my behest, for her birthday dinner. This place is awesome, they’ve got a gigantic Wurlitzer organ that makes all sorts of great little toots and woots. All the drums and xylophones and keyboards surround the pizzateers in the dining room and they’re all run from the single consul by a single organist. There’s even a line of ducks that jump and quack their little songs. At the end of patriotic numbers a great big flag comes down from above and all sorts of lights run around. Great times. The dude who plays the organ takes requests, and he always does mine, especially when I ask for the Beatles. Their pizza ain’t so bad either. I like it there a lot, but you don’t have to take my word for it, you Milwaukeeans ought to go try it out now (be sure to bundle up). I’ll never forget how much I loved nights at Organ Piper Pizza watching the locals dancing their polkas while I drank Sprechers root beer. What a great place.

The Fourth at Dale and Linda's

Yep, I'm still finishing up the pictures from the 4th of July, I'm only 4 months behind. Wow it seems like so much longer ago than that! Our good friends Dale and Linda (we miss you guys so much) invited us over to their new house for a barbecue. I'll have to captionize these pictures so we all know who is what and where.
This is Donny on the left and Dale on the right. Dale is a super actuary genius and I wanna be just like him when I grow up. We're so lucky to have such great friends, they made our time in Wisconsin hundreds of times better. We had a lot of fun at Dale and Linda's house, we're gonna miss those days of Wisconsin 4th of July barbecues.
Here's Dale's wife, Linda. We used to be coworkers back in the day. I'll never forget all the quality time I used to spend leaning up against Donny's desk at work, talking with him and Linda. Then Donny quit, then Linda quit and I was all alone. Except at the 4th of July party anyway. Dale and Linda had also invited a bunch of other friends of theirs with whom we got along very well. Zoe especially liked throwing snappy fireworks all around their deck. Why didn't any of these responsible adults stop her from this dangerous activity?
Perhaps nobody had time to stop Zoe because they were too busy lighting her on fire! This was the year of the sparklers, as Zoe went through enough of them to put her own little hole in the ozone layer. This may have been because we all enjoyed lighting a sparkler handing it to her, watching her run off in fear, come back, hold it and smile. Repeat. Celebrate the Independence of your country be blowing up a small piece of it.
Here's a picture of Zoe and Joey at the 4th of July parade. She loves that dog. Brookfiled throws a great parade down Calhoun road, this year we went with some our favorite families from the Ward. Man, I shouldn't be writing all this stuff, it really makes me miss our friends out in the mid-west. I just need to spend a few minutes remembering how much snow and -30 degree weather there was and I'll feel much better.

4th of July in Milwaukee Round 3

Our first Fourth of July in Milwaukee was a few days after Zoe was born, so the extent of our celebration was asking each other if we were going to survive until next year. Seriously, having a kid is a magical experience full of love and hope, but then you take the little bundle home and though the love is still there, it's partially covered in gross bodily fluids and 4 months of 4 a.m. feedings. But I digress, the point is that our first fourth was all but festive. The next, however, was the genesis of what I hope becomes a long-term tradition. The weekend before Independence Day the city of Milwaukee shoots off a bunch of fireworks over Lake Michigan, thus kicking off Summer Fest, the world's most expensive and musical crime scene. July 4th, 2008 we had a great time at the lake with Nathen, Jennifer and Annie and this year we reconnected with some old high school friends of mine that moved out to Milwaukee. We spent most of that forever-long pre firework evening time trying our best to not stop our children from falling into the lake. Is there anything better than a warm summer evening watching fireworks with friends and family? Now that we are Seattlites we're going to have to find another aquatic venue from which to watch the 4th o' July fireworks. I assume that since we are now on the coast such a thing will be possible. Check out this cool night time shot of downtown that Sara took on the way back to our car. She's a great picturer.

Celebratory Green Stufff

A few whiles back (I think it was about six of them) we thought it would be fun to become cake maker people...you know, the sort of people that make cakes. Sara made me a terrific one on my birthday clear back in May (yes, that's how far behind I am on blog postage, but now that I'm done with my November exam, repentence is nigh). I thought it was awesome that she made the frets out of candles. I think next year I'll request a green Gibson Les Paul, or maybe an accordian. We've sorta become addicted to making fun cakes now, and as soon as we crack the code of making fondant we'll become unstoppable. Until then we'll just keep using the Pillsbury bucket, and we'll post each one on the ol' blog.

Speaking of things that are green, some weeks later Sara presented me with the awesomest of Fathers Day cards. She's far more talented than me. Obviously I very much enjoyed our St. Patrick's Day trip to Chicago since I wrote about a gazillion blog postings about it, so I'd say that Zoe and I standing on the banks of the green-dyed Chicago river is a very appropriate scene to mark my fatherhood. This card is in follow-up to last year's card depicting Zoe and I's camel ride at the Milwaukee County Zoo. I love these cards, and I will demand one every single year until I die. Someday I expect to be given an illustration of Zoe and I standing in front of the rest home she places me in. The lines Sara draws then probably won't be quite as straight as they are now. Yes, those are penguins on my pajamas. Fathers don't have to get dressed on their day.

Westward Ho!

After months of searching for a job in a place a bit closer to home and in a climate condusive to human life, I'm pleased to announce that we've moved from Wisconsin to Utah, en route to Seattle! We move out there in two weeks. So if any of you guys are planning a trip to Seattle look us up and we'll take you out for a night on the town. You can all look forward to blog postings now that smell more like fish and less like hops. But before we start blogging in Seattle, I gotta put up some pictures of the ride out west, and some of the fun we've been having here in Utah. Sara and Zoe and I are way excited to start a new adventure out west.

Priceless Rock Junk

Welcome to the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame! Please hand over your $25, your cameras and your immortal soul! These are but sacrifices of the Gods of Rock. As my faithful blog readers already know, I am a sucker for "priceless" Rock 'n' Roll memorabilia. My many trips to the Hard Rock Cafes of the world were certainly not for the chicken strips and the Legendary 10 oz burger, rather, the red leather pants worn by Freddie Mercury and Tom Petty's jeans when he was with the Traveling Wilburys. For a guy like me, the rock museum was like a walk into Mecca itself, or perhaps a more appropriate simile would be that it was a portal to my own personal Nirvana. After a lot of thought I've decided that rather than bore you with all the amazing stuff I saw, I'll just mention my favorite; the triple omega 8-string bass guitar owned by John Paul Jones. I spent several minutes drooling over this thing, and several more minutes today trying to find a picture of it online (no cameras allowed). If anyone ever wanted to buy me a guitar, this is where my taste lies: Zoom in and look at that fret board! Yeah, I could go on and on forever, I mean the display case containing this fabulous chunk of wood and steel was right next to that cool red car in all the ZZ Top videos. Plus there was an entire room of Beatles stuff and it was super gear. Needless to say, we stayed until closing.

Via Zoe's cutities, Sara and I got to know one of the security guards, who filled us in on the little secret that we could take pictures in the lobby. Here they are:

Friendly security guard took this picture of us in front of some of the cool guitars at the front door. These were done by celebrities, which automatically renders them masterpieces. I'm not sure who did the Ramones guitar, or the George Harrison guitar, but the blue one was done by one of the most vile people in the world, Yoko Ono. I like the Ramones. And I like George Harrison.

Remember that span of about 6 months in the 90's when everyone was wearing a Phish hat in order to fit in? This hot dog was at the forefront of that movement as it brought the members of the band into the audience during their 1994 Boston New Year's Eve concert. That's Sara below the airborne tube steak, next to Billy Joel's convertible.

And finally I think I'm obligated to include these dangling cars from a number of past U2 concerts. Unlike most U2 songs, these cars are all very unique and artistically interesting. I really liked the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. It was a great way to finish up our tour de Midwest.

Cleveland and it's Hall of Fame

So this is the exterior of the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame and Museum and Gift Shop and Snack Hut. I too was curious as to why Cleveland is considered the birthplace of Rock 'n' Roll, we found out that it's because some local DJ guy made up the term and popularized it. There's actually a big exhibit in the museum dedicated to the Cleveland rock'n'roll scene, which, I must say is pretty lame-o. No offense to you, Drew Carey, if you happen to be reading my blog between recordings of the world's most bestest game show ever, but the evidence suggests that Cleveland does not rock...or at least it didn't until the Hall of Fame came around.

As you can see from its funky shape, the museum itself is quite the site to see. It was designed by Chinese architect I.M. Pei, who was also responsible for a way cool building in Hong Kong called the Bank of China Tower, you should look it up. Right next door to the building is the football field where the Cleveland Browns play, cleverly named the Cleveland Browns Stadium. I thought it interesting to note that Cleveland is the only NFL team that has never played in or hosted the Super Bowl. Go Cleveland! The stadium and the R'n'R HoF are both on a little peninsula that juts out into lake Erie.

I guess I shouldn't be too harsh with my Cleveland facts, the city is far nicer than some of its Midwest counter parts, in that it actually has buildings that look like they're inhabited. Plus I think its pretty cool how all the suburbs are built up on hills and each one is named Something Ridge. But enough about Cleveland, this posting's supposed to be about the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. Please note that I appropriately wore my Zeppelin sweatshirt into the complex. There are actually people at the door checking to make sure that all patrons are appropriately dressed, thanks to them, no one was admitted onto the premises bedecked in Hannah Montana or Brett Favre apparel. This alone justified the $25 entrance fee.

A Stop in the Forest City

My good wife has had to endure many hours of whining over the last four years as I've begged her to take me to see the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, and during this trip we finally did what was required to shut me up. Off we went to Cleveland, Ohio. While there we also got to enjoy a visit with Sara's cousin Justin, his wife Anna, and their three cute little girls, Daisy, Lilly and Violet. I'm still wondering why in the world we didn't take any pictures while we were visiting them, probably because we were too busy talking about this and that. It's so cool that we country folks from the west can survive in the "big" cities of the Midwest. Of course, none of us actually stayed there forever, it seems that potato-fed westerners only temporarily enjoy being corn-fed midwesterners.

Cleveland had other exciting things to offer, but we didn't really have a whole load of times to experience them. We do, however, have many pictures snapped from the car window of the local sites, such as the FREE stamp, which is located not too far from the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. This is another one of those great big chunks of public art that is placed in the most unusual of places all over the world. I really think somebody should put together a book filled with the world's best public art. It would have to be a giant book that would be placed in the middle of the kitchen and propped up with massive amounts of hidden steel. The FREE stamp was done by married Dutch artists Coosje van Bruggen (female) and Claes Oldenbur (male). They also did that gigantic clothes pin across the street from City Hall in Philadelphia, and my personal favorite, Typewriter Eraser, Scale X, which I'm sure to post a picture of one of these days, seeing how it's located in Seattle.

We also enjoyed checking out Lake Erie, which is very large. Those Great Lakes are super cool to see, I still can't wrap my head around how huge they actually are. I think they should be called seas instead of lakes, I don't care how unsalty they are. As you can likely tell, it was sorta rainy while we were in Cleveland, so our exterior pictures were taken in such haste that they came out mostly blurry...and wet. Here's Sara as pictured with some boats. We like boats because you just don't see them every day, and that chain is pretty awesome.

Historic words etched in stone...and motorola screens

Holy cow, I feel like I've been blogging about Gettysburg for the last two months. I think this last posting should finish it up, these pictures were taken at the actual disputed spot that Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address. All the pennies on the monument were put there by visiting tourists. Sara and I checked, and there were no slots for debit cards, so we weren't able to properly honor the giver of the famous address.

As always, I've got loads of partially useful facts about the address itself, but I think I can boil them all down to this single sentence: Four months after the battle in Gettysburg, Lincoln spoke for about two minutes, preceded by an old guy who spoke for over two hours, all this while only half of the 7,500 dead soldiers had been buried. That's pretty sad stuff. The words of the address are super moving, I remember reading them while standing in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. We were there pretty late at night in January, just Sara and I, and we spent nearly an hour reading all the inscriptions up and down the walls. The enormous statue of President Lincoln stared down on us as we read his famous words in gigantic stone letters. This is in great contrast to the experience had by the field-tripping youth at the Gettysburg Address site who spent most of their historical tour texting to one another. Or perhaps they were using their cell phone apps to read the Gettysburg Address and commenting to one another about it via text message.

The best-known portions are at the beginning and the ending of his brief speech, but I also love the stuff in the middle. I wonder if presidents come up with better stuff to say when tragic events occur? I guess what I really like about presidential speeches of those days were that these are the actual words of President Lincoln, not his assistant speech writer twice removed. Perhaps presidents of nowadays would write their own speeches if they had someting more important than greenhouse gasses and health insurance to write about. Gettysburg was an incredible experience, I don't think I've ever put so many words on this blog about any other place. If you can get there, you just gotta make the trip.

Ike's Place

Just before he became supreme commander of the whole wide world (well NATO anyway), Dwight D. Eisenhower purchased a 189-acre parcel of land on the Gettysburg battlefield. He and Mamie got the land, the old farmhouse, 600 chickens and 25 cows for only $40,000. He gave Mamie carte blanche to spruce the place up, and she went to town. Six years and $250,000 later, the place was done and Dwight invited the entire White House Staff to help warm his house. The Eisenhowers spent 365 days of his two terms at the Gettysburg house, and entertained the likes of Nikita Krushchev, Charles de Gaulle, Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan on its grounds. We didn't take the time to go up close to the house, but here's a picture that we snapped from the top of the tower out on the battle field. I guess if anybody deserves a giant house on a haunted battlefield, it's Eisenhower.

Monument to the 20th Maine

Being the progeny of generations of westerners, Sara and I can't trace our family tree to any rustic Civil War fighting types...at least not at the moment. Due to this, we weren't able to get our pictures next to the monument hailing the names of our family's fallen heroes. Instead we posed in front of the monument to the 20th Maine since we'd read so much about them. We were also fortunate enough to have asked a crazy lady from Maine to snap the picture for us. Not only did we get this well taken snap shot, but we were also the recipients of many stories about her own family's fighting among the 20th Maine, as well as her many reenactments thereof. I think it's kinda cool that this monument stands among the very rocks that were the cover for the members of the 20th Maine as they defended Little Round Top from the Alabamans, eventually ran out of ammo, and charged down the hill brandishing their bayonets. Thanks to The Killer Angels, this has gotta be one of the most photographed non-statue monuments in the battlefield.

A Little Time at Little Round Top

Here's Zoe and I on Little Round Top. Several Union brigades defended this hill on the second day of fighting, and one can read story after story about the heroic things that were done by the Union soldiers to defend their position. We spent a couple hours walking around on the hill, not because it was so large that such a huge amount of time was required to take it all in, rather, because there was so much to see and contemplate up there.
Can you imagine the courage it would take to be part of the Alabama or Texas brigades that were ordered to run up this hill while being shot at from above? Or to be one of the soldiers from the 20th Maine that ran out of ammunition after the first 2 assaults from below, and drew their bayonetts as they ran down the hill to encounter the oncoming Confederate soldiers? Or to be an artillery guy trying to lug your cannon up the hill, all the while being shot at by snipers, only to discover at the top of the hill that you couldn't lower the cannon's turret far enough to effectively fire at the oncoming enemy?

The view from the top of Little Round Top is the same view of the battlefield that was seen by hundreds of soldiers. Even after seeing the movies, reading the books and visiting the memorials, I can't picture what actually happened on and around this hill. I'm not sure whether to call these grounds sacred or not...people died for my freedom, and I know that this fact adds a few tallies under the "sacred" column, but I can't get over the fact that no matter how ticked off people can get, there's not really a reason to get the guns out. Yet still, on the other hand, everyone that has visited this site can feel the reverence of the locale, thus rendering the area one of holiness, says I.

The Ex-Gettysburg National Tower

I'm not sure if many other people out there in the world get as interested in stuff like this as I do, but I just found out that there used to be a great big tower on the battle ground that got knocked over in the year 2000. Some guy owned a bit of land adjacent to the National Military Park and thought it would be a great idea to build a 393 foot tower in 1974 and charge people to take a look around. Check out how terrible that thing looks! Its just hideous. As you might imagine, there was a load of controversy about the tower for years until the government finally paid the owner 3 million dollars and took ownership. During the anniversary of the battle in 2000 a guy dressed up like a Union soldier, and another guy dressed up like a Confederate soldier fired cannons at the tower (ceremoniously) and ten pounds of explosives brought the tower down. You can see footage of the demolition on Youtube and its pretty cool. That tower was gigantic, I mean the Church Office Building is only 20 feet taller. It might have been neat to have such a great view of the area, but I'm a much bigger fan of the "originality" that exists in the area now that the tower has come down. I could watch that destruction video over and over again...and I did.

I don't think it was built as a replacement to the 393-foot eyesore, but there is another tower that sits out in the battlefield now. After some time I was able to convince Sara to go with me to the top of the new tower to take a look around. It was pretty cool to be able to see Little Round Top, Big Round Top, Cemetery Ridge, and all the other sites from above. Mostly though, I just wanted to climb up the cool stairs and see how easy they were to fall off of. Check out this picture of Sara with Little and Big Round Top in the back ground. Holy Cow, I have so many good pictures from Gettysburg, I haven't even started talking about Little Round Top or the Gettysburg address. I'm still so amazed that we were fully entertained for a full day in the park, I hope that the pictures and the explanations thereof are interesting enough to keep you reading for a full five minutes.