Posted on 08/18/2021 9:05:47 PM PDT by MplsSteve
The Wife and I are gonna be in northern Virginia and western Maryland for about a week and a half in mid-September.
Because of my love of the Civil War, we are gonna visit Monocacy, Gettysburg, Winchester in the Shenandoah Valley and likely Harpers Ferry. We may or may not hit Antietam. I've already seen it once before.
The Wife is surprisingly supportive of visiting these battlefields but I also am gonna throw in a winery visit and possibly head up to Hershey Pa.
I need some advice from people familiar with the areas I've described. AFAIK, we're gonna use Frederick Maryland as a central base from which to visit places in the area.
I'm looking for any suggestions regarding decent hotels/motels, places to eat, things to see, etc. I'm also looking for info about places to avoid - crime, etc.
Thank you in advance for reading this and I look foward to your suggestions and recommendations.
So you’ll skip the Nation’s Capital?
Concerned about crime? Skip DC and Baltimore.
“So you’ll skip the Nation’s Capital?”
If The Wife wants to see it, we’ll go. But I’ve been there many times back in the late 80’s and early 90’s.
We’ll fly into Baltimore instead.
As long as you're over there, you might want to check out Fort McHenry (if you haven't been there yet) and then hit up some seafood in Baltimore.
If you go to Alexandria you can visit Fort Ward, which was one of the defensive forts around D.C. during the Civil War.
Mount Vernon is a great take as well.
As for DC, don't miss the National Archives to see the Declaration and the Constitution (and much more) ... while they're still in effect. A visit to historic Annapolis and the US Naval Academy is worthwhile as well. But don't miss out on G&M! Cheers!
Other battlefields:
The Wilderness Campaign (especially if you read Shaara’s novels ahead of the visit, ditto for Gettysburg)
Manassas
Fredricksburg
Give the USMC Museum a try. Plan on at least a whole day.
Restaurant: The Fish Market in Old Town Alexandria
Oh, and Jefferson’s home and grounds in Monticello (Virginia) is a must-see as well.
If you’re going to be driving in Maryland be careful to not exceed posted speed limits. If you are CWP holder Md has no reciprocity with your home state. Concealed carry is prohibited unless you have a permit from Md itself. No loaded readily accessible handguns may be carried in any vehicle. Keep all radar detectors out of your vehicle. If you get pulled over and they see one you will get a ticket.
They are very expensive. Make sure your car rental docs are in complete order. Md is NOT visitor-friendly.
Stay out of Salamander’s driveway.
OTOH Pennsylvania has pretty much given up on speed enforcement on the Interstates.
Downside is that I-81 has become a deathtrap. Fatals almost every day.
Back in 1976, our family toured some things back there. The Petersburg VA National battlefield was interesting to me, as a civil war site (as an 8th grader). The other sights we saw were Revolutionary.
I took the same trip in September 2010.
In this order I went to:
Gettysburg
Antietam
Harpers Ferry
Monocacy
Manassas
Fredericksburg
Mount Vernon
I drove out to the Chancellorsville, Spotsylvania, and Wilderness battlefield while in Fredericksburg, not much to see there.
Best way to avoid crime is stay away from cities. Get a truck and travel trailer, and stay at nice campgrounds.
However, if you are going a bit further south, In Bedford, VA there is the National D-Day Museum, and my wife and I have been there a few times. (Perhaps best known for the impact DDay had on the town, where nineteen soldiers from that town with a population of about 3000 were killed in one day.)
Still in Bedford, but up on the Blue Ridge Parkway, there is a horse ranch, Reba Farm Inn and I have been there several times...loved it. Not your run of the mill ranch where you can go to ride horses.
Heh, if horse riding isn't interesting to you, don't bother reading the rest...:) Just me telling about it.
I am not an overly experienced horse rider, but I can ride, and it doesn't intimidate me. Unfortunately, until I went to Reba Farm for the first time, most of the riding I have done in my life has been the "follow the horse in front of you" variety, not all that exciting. But it was different there.
The guy who runs it with his wife is a real-life "horse whisperer". I am not kidding. Their specialty it taking in troubled horses and horses with behavioral problems.
He rescues them.
When he gets them, the first thing he does is remove their horse shoes. When you go out to the giant quonset hut where the horses are prepared to go on rides, there is a pile of rusting horseshoes about four feet high. None of his horses have any shoes.
He doesn't segregate his horses into groups, he just lets them all live together, stallions, mares, and geldings in a huge herd. He says it is how they live in nature, so he lets them. (He did have his prize stallion segregated in a small paddock one day as I reference below, but that was really the only time I saw it in several visits)
As he was explaining this to me, his prize stallion was in the field with all the horses, and was acting up, trying to engage a huge work horse stallion who completely ignored the high-strung stallion. It was comical, and Ron grinned as he pointed this out to me and said "Look at that big lug of a horse...the other one is trying to pick a fight with him, but he couldn't care less!"
He talks to all of his horses in plain English, and I swear, they understand him. (All these names below are made up since I can't remember them) I was watching them take out a bunch of horses one day for a group ride. He went to the pasture holding all the horses, opened the gate and yelled "Betsy! Come on." and a horse peeled off, ran over about fifty yards and right through the partially opened gate, and without any guidance, ran up the hill into the quonset hut and right up to a bucket of oats to eat and wait for a saddle.
He called "Jim! Come on." and another horse ran over and up the hill into the "stable" to get set up for a ride.
He called out "Strawberry! Come on!" and two horses ran over and both went through the gate. He yelled after one of them "Daisy! Come back...you aren't going out!" and without hesitation, the horse stopped, turned around and walked back through the still open gate unprompted!
I thought this was amazing-I know some horses are smart, but this guy seemed to have a way with them. When we went inside to saddle the horses, they were all standing where he had placed the buckets of oats and he just walked to each one and clipped their harness to an eye-bolt on the wall.
As we were saddling the horses, I heard this ruckus coming from outside somewhere, a horse whinnying loudly and making various horse noises. I was puzzled by this, and didn't know what was going on, but Ron didn't even seem to notice it. I said to Ron something like "It sounds like that horse is in trouble or something" and he stopped, went outside and I could see a small one horse paddock about 100 yards away with his prize stallion in it, and the horse was going mental, rearing up, just making a scene. Ron yelled "COWBOY! YOU AREN'T GOING OUT FOR A RIDE TODAY!" and the horse huffed and stamped its front hooves into the ground...hilariously, like a little kid being told he couldn't play with a toy!
Ron just said "He sees us getting set, and he wants to go with me on the ride."
I loved it. I had never seen horses in this light before, and I looked at them in a completely different way!
Are you a retired or disabled vet? You could maybe stay at Ft. Belivor outside of DC in VA.
I think retired get to use the BOQ??
Visited Gettysburg (oh, maybe 30+ years ago or so). Spent a couple of days. What struck me is how ALL of the monuments are ONLY for the north. It is almost like the north was battling a phantom. It’s only when you go south into North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia... that you find any monuments for the southern soldiers. Of course, by now, I’m sure that has been erased by antifa/blm/colleges, fed gov... If you are looking for history, all you are going to find is “propaganda”
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