Turkey Day 2014!

This small town was the base camp for Turkey Day in 2014. Ye Olde Photographer and his Faire Spouse were joined by friends from the western part of the state for a holiday celebration. We had originally booked Wednesday through Friday nights, but when forecasts all over the state began calling for 5 to 8 inches of snow on Wednesday, we made a quick adjustment. We were able to move our arrival at the Mercersburg Inn up to Tuesday so on Wednesday we could watch the falling snow from the windows instead of a windshield.

Mercersburg was the boyhood home of James Buchanan, the 15th president, the only one from Pennsylvania. As such, the Buchanan name is seen in quite a few places around town. Mercersburg is also home to Mercersburg Academy, a prestigious private college preparatory school (grades 9 through 12) that has a campus and facilities that would be the envy of many colleges. We did walk a bit of the campus when the sun managed to show briefly on Thanksgiving morning. In addition to top notch breakfasts and a blow-out Thanksgiving meal at the Inn, we also enjoyed some excellent meals at several other restaurants in the town. There is some detailed history of the town online. Mercersburg is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

On Friday we wandered over to Gettysburg, only about an hour away. There we toured the visitor center and museum, and did a bit of the self-guided auto tour. There are a number of areas that would be fun to walk around on foot, but the near freezing temperatures accompanied by a breeze put a chill (literally) on doing much of that.