Gettysburg – A Visit to Civil War Battlefields

A short trip from Haymarket found us outside Gettysburg, PA. We stayed at a really nice campground in a pretty setting. They even let the lightening bugs out at night for us! Being Civil War buffs, we wanted to visit both the Gettysburg and Antietam battlefields again. We spent three days revisiting areas of the Gettysburg battlefields that we had been to before as well as seeing other areas that we hadn’t yet explored. We even went to the East Cavalry Battlefield where one of theUnion generals was George Armstrong Custer. Jim had recently read a book about the Michigan cavalry units who took part in this battle and wanted to see where it actually took place.

We also took a day trip to the Antietam battlefield at Sharpsburg, Maryland. On the way we drove through Hagerstown, Maryland which has a very quaint downtown area. A lot of the buildings look like they have been restored to their earlier glory (some to the mid-1800’s, some to the art deco of the 1920’s). The battle at Antietam was the bloodiest single day battle of the Civil War. We toured the battlefield with a National Park ranger who did a wonderful job of explaining the battle. He really brought it to life for us.