It was April 2002 and I needed a road trip. I wanted to go up to Virginia to see Paul and Lee and I thought that this time I'd forgo my trip to the Air & Space Museum and visit Harpers Ferry instead. En route, I visited my friends Pat & Ginger and Joe. After a few days in North Carolina I'd seen Duke University in Durham and the beach community of Hampstead, on the intercoastal waterway. But poor planning seldom takes long to show up. I had my new Canon G2, but only a 64 MB compact flash card. Worse, I had neglected to bring the cable I needed to dump pictures to my laptop. That was certainly going to crimp my style! I ended up cutting back on the number and size of the pictures I took. So, the visiting - in NC, then later in VA - was fine but my picture taking was stuck on "max conserve".
My storage dilemma really hurt at Harpers Ferry. I ended up with a few uninspiring snapshots of the armory and the railway bridge but, having recently read my owner's manual, I decided I would try to stitch three pictures together and see if I can get a panoramic shot worth saving. This picture, taken on the south side of town (in WV), shows the view looking east, downriver. The confluence of the Potomac and the Shenandoah is in the center of the picture. The upper Potomac passes between the railway abutment and Maryland Heights on the left. The Shenandoah River flows up from Virginia on the right. I think the panorama turned out very well.
Maybe I'd have better luck up the road at Antietam. Another panorama, this view from the visitor's center takes in everything from the Cornfield on the left to the Sunken Road on the right. If I'd added one more frame to the left, I could've included the restored Dunker Church as well.
The real treasure of the Antietam battlefield is the Burnside Bridge. At perhaps no other site is it so easy to see exactly how things turned out and why. General Burnside's 12,000 Federal troops were repulsed in successive attempts to take the bridge by 450 Georgians on the bluffs overlooking the bridge, delaying the Union advance from nine o'clock in the morning till about one in the afternoon when they finally carried the bridge with the help of artillery. The view above is from the bluff held by the Confederates, looking down at the attackers; the view below is from the Union side, looking up at the defensive positions.
I actually considered going up to Gettysburg, but then thought better of it when I looked at my watch. Over the next couple of days I wandered around Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and the Wilderness but, in the end, once the troops have left the field it takes someone like Shelby Foote or Ken Burns to bring it back to life.
One other treat on this trip was meeting cousin Rachel. We first met online in the 90s, chasing family ghosts, and soon found my gggg grandmother, Sarah Hawkins West was the sister of Rachel's gg grandfather, Joseph Carter Hawkins, making Rachel and I fourth cousins, twice removed. Born in west Texas, she was living in the Shenandoah Valley at the time, which made it an easy choice to meet her in person on the way back to Georgia. The picture below shows our meeting at a sandwich shop alongside I-81.
My storage dilemma really hurt at Harpers Ferry. I ended up with a few uninspiring snapshots of the armory and the railway bridge but, having recently read my owner's manual, I decided I would try to stitch three pictures together and see if I can get a panoramic shot worth saving. This picture, taken on the south side of town (in WV), shows the view looking east, downriver. The confluence of the Potomac and the Shenandoah is in the center of the picture. The upper Potomac passes between the railway abutment and Maryland Heights on the left. The Shenandoah River flows up from Virginia on the right. I think the panorama turned out very well.
Maybe I'd have better luck up the road at Antietam. Another panorama, this view from the visitor's center takes in everything from the Cornfield on the left to the Sunken Road on the right. If I'd added one more frame to the left, I could've included the restored Dunker Church as well.
The real treasure of the Antietam battlefield is the Burnside Bridge. At perhaps no other site is it so easy to see exactly how things turned out and why. General Burnside's 12,000 Federal troops were repulsed in successive attempts to take the bridge by 450 Georgians on the bluffs overlooking the bridge, delaying the Union advance from nine o'clock in the morning till about one in the afternoon when they finally carried the bridge with the help of artillery. The view above is from the bluff held by the Confederates, looking down at the attackers; the view below is from the Union side, looking up at the defensive positions.
I actually considered going up to Gettysburg, but then thought better of it when I looked at my watch. Over the next couple of days I wandered around Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and the Wilderness but, in the end, once the troops have left the field it takes someone like Shelby Foote or Ken Burns to bring it back to life.
One other treat on this trip was meeting cousin Rachel. We first met online in the 90s, chasing family ghosts, and soon found my gggg grandmother, Sarah Hawkins West was the sister of Rachel's gg grandfather, Joseph Carter Hawkins, making Rachel and I fourth cousins, twice removed. Born in west Texas, she was living in the Shenandoah Valley at the time, which made it an easy choice to meet her in person on the way back to Georgia. The picture below shows our meeting at a sandwich shop alongside I-81.
No comments:
Post a Comment