Five stops in one day? No problem.
We accidentally slept in (closing the blinds made all the difference), so we started the day a bit behind schedule. Ryan drove which gave me time to get caught up on receipts, notes from the stops, etc. It seems like we should have more time for reading, chilling, etc., but the pace has pretty much wiped us out at night.
First stop was Fredericksburg - very cool. The city as we saw it is Chain Store Central and there is no escaping that the city has overrun the battlefield a bit. You can still get a decent idea of what happened from the Sunken Road and Marye's Heights. The movie here was good as well (Antietam's was awful). You really get a sense of how stupid the repeated charges up Marye's Heights were when you stand up there.
We drove around to Prospect Hill where Jackson was attacked by Meade, but couldn't get too much of a sense of what it looked like there. Interesting to learn that Burnside planned that attack as his main assault, but somehow got sidetracked with an unwinnable charge up Marye's Heights instead.
Perhaps the most important thing I learned here was exactly how the pontoon bridge worked. I've taught it for years, but never really understood what it meant to build one. You take a bunch of small boats and line them up parallel to the shore, then lay wood across to make a bridge. Simple enough when you see it.
Next was Chancellorsville - Lee's masterpiece but also Jackson's demise. Another movie - decent enough. You can make the 12-mile flanking movement Jackson made (one in which his men ate as they marched and many discarded valuable supplies just to lighten their loads), but we didn't have time for that. And we were in flip-flops. We somehow failed to notice the Jackson monument right behind the visitor's center, so we had to double-back for that. Jackson was, of course, shot by his own men. I didn't realize the soldiers who did it were being yelled at to stop firing at their own people just before they hit Stonewall.
From Chancellorsville to the Lacy House where we went to see Jackson's buried arm, not the Lacy House. We couldn't really tell that to the FOUR volunteers waiting to greet us as we entered who had clearly been waiting all day for someone to tell about the House. I told them we were in a bit of a time crunch which did not hurry them up in the least. We eventually got out to the arm which was neat. They properly buried the man's arm and it has been taken care of over the last 148 years. How many people have two grave sites people want to visit?
We were hustling at this point to cram everything in and the rain didn't help. We got a little wet as we checked out The Wilderness (where Longstreet was shot after emerging as the hero...tough break for Pete. Also losing the use of his right arm for the rest of his life must have sucked too). The fighting in the woods here freaked me out. Imagine fighting in thick woods, filled with fire and smoke. What would be worse - a wound that required an amputation with no anesthesia or burning to death on the battlefield? I bet there was someone who endured both. And, based on the statistics, I'll bet he had an STD as well.
The rain was coming down hard at this point, but we continued to Spotsylvania (with the Braves on the radio who nearly blew a 6-0 lead and had me a little on edge during the drive). There isn't much to see at Spotsylvania. Grant wanted to fight here all summer, but instead it was two weeks. There is a cool section called The Bloody Angle where there was 20 hours of hand-to-hand combat. Did anyone have a limb amputated, get burned by fire at The Wilderness and by an STD, AND fight at the Bloody Angle? I hope not.
Finally, we got to The Jackson Shrine which is hyped up in Jeff Shaara's battlefield book. It shouldn't be. It is okay - Jackson died here and they still have the bed. And...that is about it. There were two people working this remote destination which led Ryan and I to question why you would pay two NPS workers to sit there. If we have to make cuts after this debt deal, I think I know one place we could save some money.
We ate at a local Italian place on our way to Richmond and then got to our Holiday Inn. I even had time to get a much-needed haircut from a Lebanese woman who told me some sobs stories in the hopes of getting a big tip on my $12 haircut. She got a fair one.
Tomorrow we check out the Museum of the Confederacy, then play the rest of the day by ear.
CC
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