Tuesday May 14th

We started the day with a 40 minute drive to Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. It is now a national park, incorporating most of the village. You leave your car at the visitor centre and they bus you down the hill to the lower town. It is nice and quiet there, no traffic and not a lot of people (still early in the season). All the buildings have been turned into small museums. This is where John Brown raided the armoury in 1859 (just before the civil war started). It is also one of the stops on the Appalachian Trail (between Georgia and Maine). Harpers Ferry changed hands eight times during the civil war and quite a few battles took place here. We spent about half a day and then moved on to Antietam National Battlefield (in Maryland), where battles here made this America's bloodiest day - 23,000 dead or wounded during the civil war in 1862. There was a movie at the visitor centre, explaining the events, and lots of monuments in memory of the various regiments whose soldiers fell here. We set off again and stopped for the night at Bedford, Pennsylvania.