I was stationed in Washington back in the early 1970's, so I got to spend a lot of weekends at the National Archives and Library of Congress. The stuff I transcribed (handwritten on paper in those days) filled a lot of boxes. My retired years have been spent in slowly re-transcribing them onto my computer.

Washington made a good base of operations to visit Gettysburg, Sharpsburg, Fredericksburg, etc., which I did on numerous occasions. Thankfully, my wife was a good sport about it.