Monday, November 1, 2010

The Trip - Part 8 - Gettysburg & Our Celebrity Encounter

Day 10
On our way out of Washington D.C. we stopped at Ft. Mc Henry in Maryland where the 'Star Spangled Banner' was written. This was especially cool since just the day before we had seen THE flag that inspired our anthem at the Smithsonian.

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From there, we started our journey toward Ohio, stopping along the way in Gettysburg. This civil war battle site was considered the turning point in the war, it also recorded the highest casualties and was the site of Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address" (obviously). It was a gorgeous area to drive around and incredible to read about the long hard battles that were fought there.

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(the hole between the two diamond shapes in the side of this barn was formed by a canon ball during the Civil War)

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As we were driving in to the parking lot of the visitor's center in Gettysburg to get a driving tour map Benson thought he recognized someone walking through the parking lot. He said "Isn't that..." "Paul Giamatti!" I finished.

So we parked and told his cousins what we thought we had seen. When we walked into the visitors center, sure enough, there he was with his son, now sitting and enjoying a snack. We all wanted to somehow document that we had seen him, but knowing that he probably didn't want to be disturbed by a large group of people we stood a little bit away and stared and whispered like a bunch of school kids. We were a little too obvious since he put his sunglasses on right before I took this paparazzi shot:

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Aunt Laura decided she was brave enough to walk over and get his autograph so we all slowly went over and said a quick hello and headed along our way.

There was an older man sitting at the table with Paul and his son (seen in picture above) chatting with them and we all just assumed they were together. Then, when we went up and began talking to him the man said "oh are you famous or something!?" to which Paul replied "No, I'm just an actor"

We all thought it was pretty funny that the man had just sat down at the empty seat at his table and began talking to him having no idea who he was.


Next up: Kirtland Ohio

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