{Down by the River...}

We spent the late afternoon down by the river. Give the kids water & rocks to skip and climb on and it makes for happy kids!

It is such a beautiful and peaceful place!

Though the water is shallow, all the rocks create currents that can be dangerous so we didn't let the kids wade.

We found some critters too...

Siblings, Adventurers & friends= sweet memories!

Of course, someone had to fall in and it was the one you least expected to do so!

This crazy crew kept Shannon and I on our toes! So glad that we had these days to be together!

{Next stop... Harper's Ferry and the Appalachian Trail...}

We headed to the Visitors Center at Harper's Ferry National Park after breakfast. After getting some information about things we might want to see, we decided to hike down to town instead of taking the Park Bus. We started out on the Visitor Center to Lower Town Trail but opted to take the ridge (following the Appalachian Trail) into town via Jefferson Rock instead of following the river the whole way.

Harpers Ferry is the mid-way point along the 2178 mile Appalachian Trail.

The views were beautiful! It was here at Jefferson Rock that Thomas Jefferson stood on October 25th, 1783 and said these words; 

"This scene is worth a voyage across the Atlantic."

As you head down into town, there are beautiful ruins of an old church long the trail...

The buildings in Harpers Ferry are beautiful!

The trail runs through town after crossing the bridge over the Potomac River.

We headed over the bridge with the kids. You can see the confluence of the Shenandoah

 River & the Potomac River beautfully from the middle of the bridge.

The C & O Canal ran along the Potomac River for  184 miles for over 100 years. It was a passageway to move goodies up and down along the river inland from Washington Dc to Western Maryland. We walked (and jumped) along the locks on the old canal!

Before we headed back over the bridge into town.

{Burnside Bridge}

Our last stop at Antietam was the lower bridge, known as "Burnside Bridge."

If trees could talk... in the picture you can see a tree standing tall next to the bridge, in pictures taken after the battle, this same tree was standing, riddled with bullet holes, but still there. As the wind blew through it's leaves, Shannon and I both thought about the stories of pain, triumph and defeat that it has witnessed... Oh, it could tell what it had seen...
The bridge crosses Antietam Creek, here the battle continued into the afternoon and until the Final Attack.

From here, we loaded up and continued our journey, next to Harper's Ferry...

{Sacred Ground}

We spent the afternoon at the Antietam Battlefield. It is hard to put into word this experience if you take the time to grasp what happened here Sept. 17, 1862.

"Of all the days on all the fields where American soldiers have fought,
the most terrible by almost any measure was September 17, 1862.
The battle waged on that date, close by Antietam Creek at
Sharpsburg in western Maryland, took a human toll never exceeded
on any other single day in the nation's history. So intense and
sustained was the violence, a man recalled, that for a moment in his
mind's eye the very landscape around him turned red."
                                                      
                                                       Stephen W. Sears,
                                                       Landscape Turned Red

Standing on a gentle hill is Dunker Church, around this small church the battle raged on Sept. 17.

Down the road, a cornfield stands...

It was here that some of the worst fighting took place. Here on this 24 or so acre field, there were about 8,500 causalities over 3 hours of fighting...

We had some humbling conversations as we drove and walked.

Known as the "sunken road," this path below was held by the Confederates during battle.

We climbed the lookout tower near the sunken road, the view from the top was beautiful!

{Heading to Sharpsburg...}

Shannon and I packed up the kids and headed to Sharpsburg.

Antietam National Cemetery was our first stop. I wouldn't have planned to stop here and would have headed straight for the battlefield but when I was looking for Jr. Ranger Books on the National Park website, it had one for the National Cemetery as well. Well worth the stop!

Working together on their Jr. Ranger books...

This monument is known as "Old Simon."

It is the Private Soldier Monument in the center of the cemetery. It reads...

"Not for themselves, but for their country."

Looking out to the mountains, across this ground, so many men fought for what they believed in and gave their lives.

(Photos by Lenna unless she is in them.)