Thursday, January 23, 2014

Touring Vicksburg National Park

January 21, 2014

     A trip to the Vicksburg National Military Park was planned for today.  We had stopped here briefly a few years ago, but only had about an hour to investigate the park before it closed and wanted to come back for a real visit.
     Before we could start, we needed to find a fax machine so Al could get some papers signed for the sale of his mother's house.  We asked at the RV Park office and they sent us to the Ameristar Hotel.  They were quite happy to do this, but found there was trouble with the sending fax machine, so it took about an hour to get everything finished.   We drove to the park's visitors center and watched the film that explains everything then back to the iHome to eat lunch and take the dogs for a walk.
The beginning of the 16 mile road tour
     The battleground drive is quite extensive and informative.  I have never been to Gettysburg, so it is quite astonishing to see the ground, the cannons, the markers for tens of thousands of troops that battled here.  The siege and fall of Vicksburg was one of the deciding factors in the war of the north and south.  Not going to go into all the detail, as anyone interested can read about it, but I would suggest you take a peek at the link above.  Suffice to say, if the north had not starved them out, things would have been different.  Grant could not defeat the soldiers of the south at Vicksburg. 

Some of the battle grounds


There are 13,000 unknown soldiers.
     Wednesday: off to Foley, Alabama, our landing spot.

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