Nomad exploring life wherever I am
It was not a promising start to my stay in Holland. I was trying to beat the rainstorm that I could see on the radar, but I didn’t quite make it. Just as I entered the city limits, with a mere eight miles to go, the heavens opened up. And stayed open till just *after* I unhitched and set up at my new campsite. Timing is everything in camping and I definitely missed it this time around. But not to worry…
In 2017, I was all set to visit Indiana Dunes and then, oops, I broke my hand. That derailed the plan and it took me another four years to get here. But I made it, and I am damn happy I did. This place is a beautiful introduction to the charms of Lake Michigan.
Twelve hours. That’s all it took for Antietam (pronounced an-TEE-a-tam) to become the bloodiest one-day battle in the Civil War and in American history. On this field, on September 17, 1862, nearly 100,000 soldiers joined in battle, with 22,717 of them killed, wounded, or missing by end of day.
About a zillion years ago, when I was in the Girl Scouts (Brownie through a year of Cadettes), we used to sing about the Shenandoah River in a campfire song. Oh, Shenandoah, I long to see you, Away you rolling river. Oh Shenandoah, I long to see you, Away, I’m bound away, ‘cross the wide Missouri. I always loved that song and still can sing that first verse from memory. Which is exactly what I did in Harpers Ferry when I found myself standing, after all those years, on the bank of the Shenandoah River in West Virginia.
On my way out of the South, I stopped for a few days at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, the site of both John Brown’s raid and a Civil War battle. As with most things about the Civil War, I learned a lot that was left out of my history lessons back in the day. As a native Californian, I can tell you all about the gold rush of 1849 and the racist role of the missions. But ask me about specifics of the Civil War and chances are I’d come up blank. Consider this post, then, me sharing that late-in-life…