Tuesday April 13th 2010

Today is the day to head back to Mississippi.  After getting up a little late and getting packed and making sure everything is turned off we finally got on the road about 10AM.  Beautiful day, it’s supposed to get warm.  We had plans to stop in New Madrid and apply for our passports but we were a little late and figured we wouldn’t be going out of the country anytime soon so we decided to boogie on down the road.  We filled up with gas around Caruthersville before leaving Missouri.  $2.58 a gallon and as soon as we got into Arkansas it went to $2.70.  Jackson, Mississippi was $2.62. Not bad.  Anyway, we were going through Memphis and we decided to go a little out of the way and go see Vicksburg.  That was about 3 hours out of the way and instead of getting to Aunt Virgie’s at 6 is was after 9 when we got there.

 

This was the highlight of our trip down, “Back Yard Burgers”.  Not really, it was OK but probably won’t stop again.

This is a “no no”.  I took this picture of a cornfield while driving.  The farther south we drove the taller the corn was.  That is amazing.

I took a lot of pictures of the battlefield but will only put a few in the blog. After seeing the terrain here I can’t hardly see how they fought!  Getting around in the forest and steep hills would have been terribly hard.

If I’m not mistaken, this is the Illinois monument.  Forty two steps, one for each day the battle lasted.  There were thousands killed and injured in this battle….WHY????  I think Rodney King had a good line..”Can’t we all just get along?”

Ulysses S. Grant statue.

 

This statue commemorates the Africans from Mississippi.  All Mississippi regiments were African.  I thought this was great. They don’t get a lot of recognition for all they did and the lives that were given for these battles.  

This is the USS Cairo, sunk on the Yazoo River.  This ship is not small!  It was late and we didn’t get to go explore the ship.  The Navy had a big part in this war and our friend Dale has written a book on the Marines that also took part in the Civil War.  I didn’t even know the Marines existed then, but that is me.  I am not a Civil War buff, but if anyone wants to read this book it is on Amazon.com  and is called the “The Forgotten Marines” by Dale Sumner.  Very good book.  It may be on “lulu.com” now I can’t remember. The drive was long and we made it to Virgie’s about 9:20 and she was ready for bed, can’t blame her, we were over 3 hours late!!!  Sorry Virgie!!