History takes many forms!

Our joy in visiting present-day Pennsylvania (good friends, beautiful scenery, amazing autumn leaves) has been increased by looking back into the past. Over the last three days we've visited three VERY different museums.

The first was a tavern in Dillsburg, where we're staying with Colette and Bill. started in 1794 by James Dill (an Irishmen of unrecorded intelligence!), this stone building gave us a fascinating look back over life in the nineteenth century. It's a local museum, and is obviously very much loved. We enjoyed comparing it to early Australian buildings, but also enjoyed it for itself, and spent a wonderful afternoon there.

Today we visited two museums that couldn't have been more different. The 'National Apple Museum' in Biglerville Pennsylvania is in an old barn, and contains a large range of apple memorabilia, from apple peelers to songs about apples "Don't sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me" ... etc), to farm machinery and patchwork quilts. The gentleman (or was he an apple-tree gnome?) who showed us around was so passionate about apples that we thought we'd never get away, but his enthusiasm rubbed off on us so that we all enjoyed our unusual morning.

In the afternoon we visited the multi-million dollar Gettysburg National Military Park Museum, where we first watched a film narrated by Morgan Freeman, then ascended to view the most amazing cyclorama, over 40 ft (12 metres) tall and over 350 ft around, painted just after the battle. It was amazing! The museum itself, with memorabilia from the 3-day 1863 battle, was one of the best we've seen.

Then we followed our visit with a drive around the battlefield - green fields and thousands of Fall trees, interspersed by hundreds and hundreds of memorials. We've come away VERY impressed and very thoughtful. What a wonderful place!