This morning we left Walmart and drove over to Monocacy National Battlefield, site of the Battle of Monocacy, in which outnumbered Union forces fought a delaying action against confederate troops to allow time for reinforcements to arrive in Washington for its defense.  The Union succeeded in delaying the Confederate assault on Washington for 24 hours, long enough for Union reinforcements to arrive in Washington and save the city from Confederate conquest.

M tried on some period gear:

The kids completed their Junior Ranger workbooks and received their badges:

We left the RV at Monocacy National Battlefield and drove west to Harpers Ferry National Historical Park.  We took the shuttle bus from the parking lot to the historic district.  It wasn’t as scary as the kids made it out to be:

Historic Harpers Ferry:

This outline is all that remains of one of two armory buildings briefly captured in John Brown’s Raid:

The firehouse in which John Brown was captured by then-US Colonel Robert E. Lee:

This obelisk marks the original location of the firehouse.  At some point, it was moved to allow the building of a railroad and now is located on the left side of the photo a few hundred feet away:

We walked across the Shenandoah River:

On the far side, we walked under the bridge while a train thundered by above:

From here, we could see Lock 33 on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal.  The canal was destroyed by flooding in 1924, so its now an empty ditch:

Lock 33:

We returned to the visitor center where the kids handed in their Junior Ranger workbooks.  The kids completed all three levels in the workbook, and received the corresponding three badges:

While Trish and B took the shuttle back to the parking lot to pick up the truck, M and I walked to the Appalachian Trail Conservancy office in modern-day Harpers Ferry, the host site for the Junior Ranger workbook for the Appalachian National Scenic Trail:

The kids worked on their workbooks in this simulated trail shelter:

The kids completed their workbooks and received their badges and patches:

We next drove north to visit Antietam National Battlefield, site of the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest single-day battle in US history with a 22,717 combined total of dead, wounded, and missing:

The driving tour took us to the sunken road, also called bloody lane, where the two armies combined suffered 5,600 casualties over a four-hour period:

The kids completed their workbooks and received their Junior Ranger badges:

We drove back to Monocacy National Battlefield, picked up the RV, and drove south to overnight at the Walmart of Leesburg, Virginia.  See the trip map for today’s drive and our current location.