Teresa Dennis dates her fascination with historic travel back to the 1970s, when her parents took the family on extensive summer vacations to explore historic sites.

Of course, it doesn't hurt that she herself grew up in an area that attracts visitors interested in history--Manassas, Va., site of one of the fiercest battles in the American Civil War.

When she met her future husband, Roy, a Delawarean, the two found that they shared an ardent interest in history. They have built a hobby for a lifetime on that interest, shared until this year with their daughter, Mary, now a freshman at UD.

Teresa recalls, with a startling amount of detail, trips that her family took more than 30 years ago, the first to New England, the second to the American West. "I remember crossing the bridge from Lexington to Concord with my brothers and sisters, all of us wearing Colonial hats," she says. "It was fun to go back to the same place with Mary and do some of the same things with her that I had done as a kid."

Teresa's childhood trip out West included visits to Pike's Peak, Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons and Lake Tahoe. She remembers visiting Buffalo Bill's grave site, swimming in Utah's Great Salt Lake, trekking past the site of the Donner party's demise, seeing the Mormon Tabernacle and watching Native Americans dance on a reservation.

While she has been to some of the most renowned tourist sites in the United States, Teresa is always in search of the obscure fact, the tidbit of information that is not part of every tour guide's "canned" presentation. What she and her husband have found is that if they go back to the same sites often enough, they can get to the bottom of a story.

"We especially love Gettysburg," she says, "so we go there at least two or three times a year. Each time we go, we learn something new. Sometimes, it takes something like a popular movie being made to get new research under way. For example, after the movie Gettysburg came out, there was a lot of interest in Big Roundtop and the battle fought there."

The Dennises have learned that national park rangers are a great source of information. "They know things that the regular tour guides don't," she says. "On a visit to Devil's Den [another Gettysburg site], for example, we learned that the pictures of the dead soldiers had been staged--the bodies had been moved and positioned for a good picture. It was done to honor the soldiers, but it wasn't historically correct."

On yet another visit to Gettysburg, the Dennises had the good fortune to spend time talking with a real physician who was recreating the role of a Civil War surgeon. "He gave us all kinds of fascinating, detailed information about the injuries and the fatalities that we would never have gotten from a history book or an organized tour," Teresa says.

Touring sites like Gettysburg on bicycles and horseback has provided the Dennises with views that they would not have gotten from typical walking or driving tours. They also have witnessed "mini-history" in the making.

"One time, we came upon an impromptu shrine that someone had made to the Confederacy," she says. "On another visit, we watched what was supposed to be a memorial to the Irish Brigade, but we quickly learned that the ceremony was really a platform for members of the IRA to make inflammatory speeches in defense of their cause."

Fort McHenry, which is near their Maryland home, is another historic place of keen interest to the Dennises. The site of the battle that prompted Francis Scott Key to write The Star Spangled Banner during the War of 1812, Fort McHenry was later used to house prisoners during the American Civil War. "On one trip to the fort, we learned that Francis Scott Key's grandson had been held prisoner there, in the erroneous belief that he was a Southern sympathizer," Teresa says. "That was a common occurrence in border states like Maryland."

At least once a month, the Dennises take a trip to a historic site, always on a quest for new and obscure facts. In addition to Gettysburg and Fort McHenry, their favorite destinations include New Castle, Del.; Frederick, Md.; and Harper's Ferry, W.Va.

And, when business trips or family visits take them to new territory, they are always in search of the battlefield or the port rather than the shopping center or the botanical garden.

"I'm always moved when I go to these historic sites and think about all the men who died there, fighting for what they believed in," Teresa says. "Learning the details of their lives--like the fact that they were writing letters to their families and reading the Bible in the belief that they were about to die--makes it all seem very real to me."