Monocacy Battlefield and Beyond!!!

June 17 – This was our first day off here at C & O Canal.  Bill changed his mind a couple of times but decided we would go to Monocacy National Battlefield near Frederick, Maryland.  First we went to a used book store in Hagerstown.  Bill didn’t find what he was looking for but I got 4 books and he settled for 3 others.  I really need to read more and blog less.  On the way thru Frederick to the battlefield we stopped at Common Market which is a big health food store and I was able to get coconut flour and we managed to find a few other items we wanted. 

 

Off to war

By then it was close to lunch time so we had lunch at Wendy’s before heading to the visitor center.  They had a very nice display time lining the events leading up to the battle and during the battle.  The battle was won by the south but since Lee was not expecting a large regiment in the area of Union soldiers he did not expect there to be a battle on the way to capture DC.  He sent General Jubal Early in with 15,000 soldiers.  However, the battle occurred, delaying the south from getting to DC by a day and the Union was able to ready for them and so the south lost its opportunity to take DC.  http://www.nps.gov/mono/index.htm  The battle took place primarily on 3 large farms along the Monocacy River.   We visited all three places but the last one is privately owned and you can’t go to it or really get a decent photo of the farm house.

 

It drizzled on and off a bit but not enough to be a deal breaker.  We found our way to the Monocacy Aqueduct, which is part of the C & O Canal National Historic Park.  The aqueduct was built to house a lock on the top for the canal. We walked across and had nice views of the Monocacy River.  The Union tried to blow it up but failed.  It is still “solid as a rock”, well, it is rock.  

http://www.nps.gov/choh/historyculture/themonocacyaqueduct.htm 

 

The long and winding road

The really interesting part of the day was getting home on small unnamed roads on the map.  Bill does not like driving on the up and down roads that curve back and forth with lots of woods all around.  I finally took out the Garmin to find out if we were going in the right direction and we had to turn around twice.  We saw some huge beautiful dairy farms and lots of wheat, corn and hay.  It was much more serene than driving on the interstate but did get a little tense on some of those blind curves.

 

I had packed a load of wash in the truck in case we made our last stop at the grocery with a Laundromat close by and since that wasn’t quite the way we came home (through lots of tiny towns), we just drove through Sharpsburg to Shepardstown to Food Lion and the laundry next door.  I put the load in and Bill watched it while I made a short visit to Food Lion.  We took our dirty truck through the “do it yourself” car wash and brought our laundry home to dry for free in our dryer.

 

As we were unloading a couple of young girls asked Bill if he could help put their tent up.  Yeah, right!  He told them he’d send his wife to do it.  So after I put some of the groceries away I trekked almost to the darn end of the campsites and there were 2 guys and 2 girls.  It was a new tent and had directions and the guy had it put together correctly but didn’t understand there the ends of the flexible tubes went or in what loops to use, so I showed them how it all went and they were “ah now it really looks like a big tent”.  They didn’t have a hammer to put the stakes in so it was good that the ground was soft and they stood on them.  They were very appreciative!  Geez, I live in an RV, not a tent!  I haven’t put a tent up in years, but I CAN read directions.

 

Later after dinner we rode our bikes about 2 miles up and down the towpath and I checked on them and the tent was still up.