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Free breakfast at the hotel. Michelle was enjoying
a whole bowl of what she thought was some sort of grits with sausage,
until Jocelyn pointed out that it was gravy. “No wonder people were
looking at me funny!”
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The road
to Vicksburg, Mississippi.
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Billboards
for the riverboat casinos.
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Inside
the souvenir shop of the Vicksburg
Civil War Memorial.
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Apparently you
can look up your civil war ancestor.
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Reconstructed civil war trenches.
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Reconstructed
civil war trenches.
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The start of the Vicksburg driving tour. We bought a CD
that narrated our drive.
The small monuments are to individual
regiments; the larger monuments are states’ monuments for all of their
soldiers.
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A
monument in the distance. Also illustrates the extremely hilly terrain
the soldiers had to navigate.
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Jocelyn getting a closer look at the cannons.
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More cannons. The actual barrels are the
originals from the period.
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Cannons
with a monument in the distance.
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The only standing structure during the siege
of Vicksburg
was a farmhouse on the outskirts of the city.
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The Illinois memorial to their troops who died at Vicksburg.
36,000
soldiers from Illinois
died there, and
half the
total Union troops were from Illinois.
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Jocelyn climbing the steps.
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These
signs were placed throughout the park to indicate the positions of the Union and Confederate soldiers.
Red is
for Confederate, and blue is for Union.
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The text is tediously
detailed – the sequence of events, which infantry was positioned where,
the actions that occurred.
They appear to use these to inform
Civil War re-enactments.
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The Wisconsin memorial to their troops.
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A memorial for a regiment from Iowa.
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A bullet-shaped monument from Ohio.
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Monument
to soldiers of African descent who fought in the Civil War. This is the
only memorial in the country dedicated to black soldiers in the Civil
War, and it was erected in 2002.
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Most of the little monuments looked like this,
and because of the sheer numbers, most were
from Illinois.
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A trash can
that you can use without getting out of your car.
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The Kansas
memorial was more contemporary.
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An original Union tunnel.
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The
tunnel was actually very small — very short and relatively narrow!
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Tent
sheltering a Union gunboat which was sunk in the Mississippi
river and recovered in 1960.
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The gunboat and the museum.
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The gunboats were fascinating—the
Union created its navy from scratch, and the boats were created
specifically for naval maneuvers on the Mississippi
river.
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Vicksburg
was a key battle in the war and for control of the river, which was
basically the equivalent of a highway. Both armies wanted control of the
river to move supplies to the interior, and if the Union
gained control it would also divide the Confederacy.
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The metal plating and much of the wood is
original, preserved by the that settled on top of it.
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Boilers
which drove the steam engine.
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Union
cemetery.
All the
short square markers are of unidentified Union soldiers. This is the
largest Civil War cemetary in the country.
This
cemetary has 17,000 soldiers,
of which
13,000 are unidentified.
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The river in the distance.
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A decent
BBQ place where we lunched.
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There
seemed to be a lot of giant anthills in Mississippi.
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This one was just
*swarming* with ants.
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What we think might be kudzu-covered trees.
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Mississippi
riverboat casino. Parking garage being built next to it.
Bridge
over the Mississippi River to Louisiana.
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Bridge
across the Mississippi River, from Mississippi
to Louisiana.
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Bienvenue en Louisiane!
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And see Michelle in the rearview mirror.
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This made
us giggle; who knew there was such specialized furniture?
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In historic downtown Vicksburg.
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The US Marine Hospital
building.
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A civil war-era mansion, now a bed and
breakfast.
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Historic
downtown Vicksburg.
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