Oct 23-25 Antietam Battlefield

On Thursday, we drove through the rest of Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, back through West Virginia for a while, and ended up here in Williamsport, Maryland. The cool thing about this location is that it is easy day tripping to Civil War memorials.

On Friday, we went to the Antietam Battlefield, and had planned to go to Gettysburg today (Saturday), but we are sitting here in an enormous downpour of rain. So instead, we did laundry, vacuuming, dog grooming, etc. Clearly, not as enjoyable a day as we had planned! But the weather is supposed to break tomorrow, so we'll take the trip to Gettysburg then.

Here are some pictures from Antietam. It was really a sobering experience, trying to imagine a day where 23,000 men died during an 8-hour period. There were acres of headstones, many of which had no names. The country lane you see below was filled with bodies that day, and the trench was filled in for several years. When they tried to relocate the bodies to the cemetery later, it was impossible to identify everyone. The picture of the bridge is where the Union army was finally able to drive the Confederates back to Sharpsburg at the end of the day. The cornfield is planted to look as it was on that day. In over 40 acres of corn, there was not one stalk left at the end of the day. They had all been mown down by bullets. The homes are Civil War era buildings we found in Sharpsburg--would really LOVE to go inside, but they are private residences.