made it back to Colorado

 

The drive today was much better than yesterday, which was windy and raining all the wall from Highway 70 in MO to where I stopped last night in Salina, KS. The wind was still pretty strong out there today gusting and causing what fuel efficiency I had in the car to plummet.

Spring in D. C.

 

Made it to D.C.!

Wow. The traffic heading in was very light -- I came right at rush hour ~5:30p -- but once you got near the Potomac and across, it got pretty hairy. There was wrecks and fowlups, and those traffic circles seem unnavigable and pretty much appear to me to really clog things up.
Thank the stars for my GPS nav software! 

Gettysburg battlefield

Overlooking the field where the fated Pickett's charge happened 

... that these dead shall not have died in vain ...

Gettyburg Address 

I cheated slightly with this pic, as this plaque is actually located at the Antietam National Cemetery.

Perspective on losses at Antietam

From NPS site:

Not only was this the first major Civil War engagement on Northern soil, it was also the bloodiest single day battle in American history.

To view the magnitude of the losses, consider that Antietam resulted in nine times as many Americans killed or wounded (23,000 soldiers) as took place on June 6, 1944--D-day, the so-called "longest day" of World War II.* Also consider that more soldiers were killed and wounded at the Battle of Antietam than the deaths of all Americans in the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Mexican War, and Spanish-American War combined.

These losses occurred in ONE day during daylight hours.

Clara Barton was at the battlefield tending to soldiers in a nearby barn that had been turned into an infirmary.

Lincoln himself personally visited the battlefield a week later (maybe two weeks -- have conflicting memories now :), to console the wounded of BOTH sides and to try to persuade his general McClellan to advance upon the retreating southern army.

McClellan was relieved of his command later in the year (hopefully my facts are factual).

Visited Antietam National Battlefield this morning

 

I felt more of an emotional connection there than I did at Gettysburg later in the day. And it didn't have anything to do with Col. Crook.

Gettysburg is just so massive and spread out in comparison to Antietam so it is just harder to wrap your head around. Antietam/Sharpsburg is three phases in ONE day (17-SEP-1862) while Gettysburg lasts over three DAYS. 1-Jul to 3-Jul, 1863.

It is interesting to me that history can pick out moments in the battle with a particular maneuver or event by a regiment or brigade that could have greatly altered the outcome of the war (for the south in most cases at these battlefields, which the battles were considered Union victories both). There were brave infantry charges on both sides in both battles, where the soldiers involved must have known their pre-determined fate by conducting the charge...