"If you don't know where you're going, any bus will do"

Mari and I really want to visit as many of the historic Civil War sites that we can. On a cold day in January 2005, we took off in search of Antietam National Battlefield. I say "in search of" because I've always known of the great battle that occurred that as the Battle of Antietam. So, I used Mapquest.com to find the best route there, but unfortunately, the Battle of Antietam was actually fought near Sharpsburg, MD - not the isolated country road that Mapquest.com thinks is the location of Antietam.

Regardless, we had a nice drive through the back country roads and made our way to Sharpsburg, MD, and the Antietam National Battlefield. Antietam was the site of the bloodiest battle in a single day ever fought in America. The battle here resulted in more than 23,000 killed, wounded, or missing and lead to President Abraham Lincoln's declaration of the Emancipation Proclamation.

As cold as it was that day that we drove around the battlefield, we could not help but be amazed at how compact the areas where the battle occurred and could only wonder about the carnage that the survivors witnessed.

Link to images:

Antietam National Battlefield, January 29, 2005