Civil War Trip

Civil War Battlefield Road Trip – October 18-24, 2009 – A brief outline of our trip.
1) Left home at around 3:00 PM Sunday afternoon, and stayed in Elkhart, IN
2) Monday, Oct. 19 reached Gettysburg, PA around 5:00 PM. Grandpa, Steve and I went to visit the Pennsylvania Monument as night fell, and it helped us get our bearings for the next day’s trip around the battlefield. We ended the day with several hours of beer and jocularity at TGI Friday’s next to our hotel in Gettysburg.

3) Toured Gettysburg National Military Park, with an auto tour CD which gave us audio from a battlefield tour guide who narrated a two hour tour, which we turned into nearly five hours worth. An awesome day of seeing some of the most famous sites in the Civil War. Saw many of the states’ monuments, both ends and the middle of the Pickett’s charge, Little and Big Round Top, Devil’s Den, Seminary and Cemetery Ridges. Stayed in Gettysburg again.
4) Wednesday, Oct. 21 – visited the National Soldier’s Cemetery in Gettysburg, as we ended our time here. Visited Cemetery Ridge once more to see where the battle ended. From Gettysburg, we went on to Antietam National Military Park near Sharpsburg, MD. Saw the Sunken Road (or Bloody Lane), Burnside’s Bridge and the Dunker Church. This was where more than 20,000 soldiers were killed or wounded in one day’s battle in September, 1862. Stayed in Rockville, MD that night.
5) Thursday, Oct. 22 – visited Arlington National Cemetery in the morning – saw the changing of the guard at the tomb of the unknown soldiers, Robert E. Lee’s former home of Arlington House, the graves of the three Kennedy brothers; we marveled at the orderliness, beauty and serenity where more than 300,000 servicemen from every war and conflict that this country has been involved with since the Civil War. That afternoon we traveled from Arlington to Manassas, VA – site of the first and second battles of Manassas, or Bull Run. It is of personal interest to me, as the site where Major Sullivan Ballou of the First Rhode Island, was killed. His letter to his wife Sarah, is to me one of the most beautiful and heartrending pieces of prose that I have ever read. Stayed in Stafford, VA, near Fredericksburg.
6) Friday, Oct. 23 – visited Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park in Virginia. Saw the Sunken Road and Marye’s Heights, sites of awful carnage, where thousands of Union Soldiers gave their lives in fruitless pursuit of Union Gen. Ambrose Burnside’s ambiguous battle plans. From there we visited the Wilderness National Battlefield and saw where many soldiers must have thought they were in hell, as the thick, overgrown forest started on fire due to the gunfire, and many wounded soldiers burned to death because they could not escape the flames.
7) We left Virginia around 3:00 PM and are now staying in Monroeville, PA, anticipating a return to Wisconsin sometime tomorrow in the late afternoon.

Pictures at top are of Pennsylvania Monument at Gettysburg, where the names of all 34,000 Pennsylvania soldiers who fought in the battle are listed... and Burnside's Bridge at Antietam National Battlefield Military Park, near Sharpsburg, MD where hundreds of Union soldiers died or were wounded trying to cross over Antietam Creek.