Civil War Day

The main theme of our road trip is the Revolutionary War but it's hard to drive past such an important Civil War battlefield that turned the tide of the war. I remember little of history taught in school and most of it was memorizing dates but setting foot on sites like Antietam, Gettysburg, USS Arizona Memorial, Mauthausen Concentration Camp, diving Truk Lagoon and more where men, and women, have died in anger brings history out of the textbooks and makes it real. You begin to understand that behind every date and battle were real people, families, hopes, and lives cut short. These places remind us that history isn't just something that happened long ago; it's something we can still feel, learn from, and hopefully keep from repeating.

In addition to Antietam and the Antietam National Cemetery we visited the National Museum of Civil War Medicine that explores the challenges faced by battlefield surgeons, nurses, and wounded soldiers, revealing medicine’s evolution amid war’s horrors.

We decided that as good as Cracker Barrel was last night, and in spite of one being very close to our hotel we had a fine Italian dinner sitting on the patio watching a group of young boys playing football in the park next to the restaurant.

Yesterday we fired Google maps as our navigator, after tonight's drive back to the hotel I might be fired as our driver with yet another unplanned sightseeing tour, this one of Frederick's neighborhoods.Read more