​We just got back from a trip to Maryland, Washington DC and Pennsylvania. Saw lots of interesting historic sites as we hiked through the Maryland countryside, the heart of DC and Gettysburg.
 
In Maryland we saw the sites of Point Lookout Prison (the largest Union prison camp for Confederate soldiers of the Civil War), Fort Lincoln (one of three forts constructed for the defense of Point Lookout) and the statue commemorating Benjamin Welch Owens Confederate States of America (CSA) Medal of Honor actions at Gettysburg.
 
Although not "backcountry" hiking our trip to DC qualified as a 10 mile "urban" hike. We walked everywhere and saw everything that we could fit in. Saw the Air and Space Museum, Natural History Museum, National Archives, National Gallery of Art, Capitol Building , Washington Monument, WWII Monument, Viet Nam Veterans Memorial, Lincoln Monument, Korean War Monument, White House (even got to see the President's helicopters fly in) and the Hamilton statue at the Treasury Building.  The weather was 70 degrees and sunny with a slight breeze and reasonable humidity - so it was as close to a perfect as you could hope to have in DC.
 
In Gettysburg, after going through the museum and the Cyclorama (a 360° cylindrical painting of the battle, originally commissioned in 1884, that's 42 feet high and 377 feet in circumference), we hiked all over the battlefield - focusing on Little Roundtop, the Devil's Den, the Bloody Wheatfield and the Peach Orchard since that is where the most critical fighting occurred.
 
You can see all the photos of our Adventures on the Adventures/North America page.

​Here's a brief summary of the 10 highest priced items that sold at the James D. Julia "Extraordinary Firearms" auction in Maine that we recently went to.

​They range from $80,500 to $460,000:

http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2017/04/20/10-expensive-firearms-sold-james-d-julia-april-2017-auction/

On 10 and 11 April we went to Maine to the James D. Julia "Extraordinary Firearms" Auction. At the auction they were auctioning off everything from a single action Colt revolver that had been forensically proven to have been at Little Big Horn with The 7th Cavalry and Custer - to a WWII German MG-42 complete with tripod. There were some amazing firearms there. Ranging from the 1500's to today; historic to one of a kind. We all had a great time. In case you are interested the Colt revolver sold for $400,000.

If you want to see everything that they had for sale you should check out their site at:

http://jamesdjulia.com/catalog/?division=596

If you’re looking for something that is as close to the “full auto” experience as you can get without having to spend thousands of dollars on a pre-1986 firearm and submitting ATF NFA paperwork, then you might want to look into the bump fire stocks from Slide Fire. 

Since the stocks are not considered adjustable stocks or trigger manipulation devices they’ve been legally certified by the ATF. In addition, since their launch in 2010, Slide Fire has not been notified by any individual state that their products conflict with any state laws. You can even download a copy of the BATFE’s approval letter on the Slide Fire website. 

To use the Slide Fire stock the operator places their finger on the stock’s trigger rest and pulls the firearm forward so that the trigger collides with the stabilized finger, firing the first round of ammunition in the chamber. The recoil force from the discharging ammunition pushes the firearm rearward so that the trigger separates from the stabilized finger and then the process starts again. The intensity of the forward activation force can be varied by the user on-the-fly to change the firing tempo.

You can check out all the details about the Slide Fire bump fire stocks here:

http://www.slidefire.com/