We started our "Deep Dive" in beautiful Harper's Valley, West Virginia, where we stayed in a charming B & B for 3 nights. It's a lovely little unspoiled town built on 2 levels, with friendly people & nice restaurants. With our heads full of John Brown's incredible story, we immediately set out to explore the town where he carried out his ill-fated raid. See our albums "Harper's Valley" & "Brown's Raid" for a pictorial essay of the town & the Raid.

From that point on, for 2 more days, we toured 4 different Civll War Battlefields: First Manassus, Second Manassus, Antietam, & Gettysburg. It was the perfect thing to do during Covid: we started at the Vistor Center in each one, got a DVD guide to play in our car, & drove through each of the 4 battlefields, getting out at almost each stop. The weather was perfect, & what few museums were open were quite interesting.

The main reason for this blog has always been for us to keep an online record of where we've been & what we've learned from our various adventures. We can say that this "adventure" was one of our favorites. And to think that our idea for this came about because in July of 2020, we watched the Ken Burns documentary on Ulysses S Grant. This inspired us to vistit the Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield, Illinois, & then go on to the 4 Civil War Battlefields we visited.

And when we finally got back to Charleston at the end of August, we watched the entire Ken Burns series on the Civil War. What a wonderful way to end our summer experience. It wasn't exactly what we'd planned on, but our 2020 summer trip was really quite an adventure.

If you are interested in Civil War History, check out our albums for each of the Battlefields we visited.